Canadian pianist Glenn Gould [1932–1982] was one of the most acclaimed classical keyboard musicians of the twentieth century. He was an iconoclastic player whose eccentric behavior and well-documented disdain for the concert hall led him to become a near recluse toward the end of his career. To illustrate this point, Gould made his final concert appearance in 1964, even though he continued to play professionally for another fifteen years. He was especially fond of the music of J.S. Bach and famously recorded all of the Baroque master’s keyboard works, notably the Goldberg Variations (three different versions in all) and the complete set of pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier. He also recorded all five of Beethoven’s piano concertos, and his favorite composers included Mozart, Haydn, and Brahms. While many of Gould’s contemporaries relished the opportunity to perform piano pieces by major Romantic composers such as Chopin, Liszt and Schumann, Gould instead rejected that liturgy entirely.
His methodology of playing the piano was legendary in its unorthodoxy, almost to the point of annoyance. Gould’s penchant for humming along with the music as he played provided countless challenges for sound engineers, and many of his recordings do little to hide this eccentricity. He also swayed broadly from side to side while seated at the keyboard, waved his arms about as if conducting, and insisted during recording sessions that the room in which he was playing should be kept unusually warm. He was also very strong-willed when it came to musical interpretation, oftentimes choosing to perform pieces far differently than the composer may have suggested from the standpoint of tempo or emphasis. In one famous incident while preparing to play a Brahms piano concerto with the New York Philharmonic, conductor Leonard Bernstein issued a disclaimer to the audience prior to the performance, insisting the exceedingly slow tempo of the forthcoming piece was entirely the soloist’s idea. Gould also enjoyed creating his own cadenzas—a short passage, usually at the end of the first movement of a concerto, where the soloist is left to show off his or her virtuosity—that were highly alien to the style of music written by the composer, although they somehow retained a certain element of familiarity.
Gould plays a Bach piano concerto (Leonard Bernstein conducting):
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