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Bach: The Art of the Fugue

by: Glenn Gould

September 09, 2002
The Church that Gould recorded the first nine works in Bach's seminal 'Art of the Fugue' burned down before he got round recording remaining pieces: a great shame given the masterful playing on this CD. People forget (or simply have no idea) that Gould studied organ alongside piano at Toronto Conservatory. He graduated in both instruments aged 12! Gould's mother was organist at a Toronto Anglican church, so not surprisingly organ playing was very much in Gould's blood and may go a long way to explaining his remarkable abilities in contrapuntal music.

Original reviews of this set (when it came out on LP) complained about the closeness of the recording, the microphones shoved close-up to the pipes. This was part of the Gould plan, ... Read More:

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Bach - Goldberg Variations (1955)

from: Sony Classical

July 26, 2004
Sony's earlier release of this set, dating from as lately as 1992, is still available, but I'm sure they have some terribly good reason for reissuing it now. There is a reference to remastering of the sound, but I can't find out whether this is against the 1992 issue or the original one from 1955. The new disc sounds much like the old one to me, the sound of that was excellent (particularly for engineering now half a century old), and as for the performance...

This is the recording that first announced the Gould supernova to the musical world. He was 22 years old in 1955, he disavowed this account when he recorded the work again in1981, but much as I admire the latter this is the one for me. It is historic in more ways than one. In the ... Read More:

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Hannibal

from: Universal Classics

March 11, 2002
There are few occasions these days where music will take your emotions to the depths of despair and up to the highest cloud and back before the album is finished. Mostly this happens in film soundtracks and Hannibal is easily one of the finest. There is humour, sadness, heart-pounding atmosphere and some pieces that will make your heart sing and sent your soul alight as the finest music does, and should.
The highlight of the album is Vide cor Meum by Patrick Cassidy - the album is worth buying for this alone. When I first watched the film I became determined to discover which great opera that piece was from, not realising that it was written specially for the film. Rarely will you find a piece of music that makes you want to simply sit back, shut ... Read More:

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Glenn Gould: A State of Wonder - The Complete Goldberg Variations

from: Sony Classical

September 09, 2002
Glenn Gould plays the music beatifully on both recordings. He plays more slowly and smoothly in the 1981 recording than in the 1955 recording. The 1955 recording is really exciting and the 1981 recording is so elegant. The 1955 recording is dramatic and so fast that it lasts for half an hour. The 1981 recording is extremely slow that it last for an hour.

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Bach: Partitas, Preludes Fugues (Glenn Gould Edition)

from: Sony Classics

December 06, 1993
From all of bach's works, this (the partitas) is my favourite one. Compared to similar compositions i'd say that it's not as simple as the french suites neither strict and cerebral as the english suites. There are of course greater works but to me this speaks straight to the soul and the heart. Each partita is different from the other, with the even-numbered ones going further than the odd-numbered. For me, the best is the fourth, especially in this rendition by glenn gould (the allemande here seems more of an anthem rather than a dance,and probably that's what bach ment it to be). I am not a pianist therefore i can not judge his piano playing. i am a guitarist though and i think i can appreciate his effort from another point of view. And i assure you that although there ... Read More:

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Byrd/Gibbons/Sweelinck: Keyboard Works

from: Glenn Gould Edition

July 05, 1993
Gould's often cited his favourite composer was Orlando Gibbons. I think he found the uncluttered simplicity of Gibbons very close to his own aesthetic. Discussing Byrd, he saw him as the dashing, exuberant cousin, very much a public man contrasting Gibbons' intimate modesty. Having been brought up in the Anglican tradition Gould no doubt was exposed to Elizabethan music in the church services of his youth. He said he wore out two LP copies of Alfred Deller's recording Gibbons' Services. This for him was music stripped of all the stresses of the modern world, a place to seek refuge.

That he came to record a disc of Elizabethan music is hardly surprising. Byrd's flashing counterpoint sits so perfectly in Gould's hands, as ever the crystalline precision of playing ... Read More:

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Glenn Gould Plays Bach and Scarlatti

from: Glenn Gould Edition

March 03, 1997
Gould’s tonal palette, though subtle, is not particularly wide. If he has used the sustaining pedal at all in the 78 playing minutes of this disc, I missed it, and it is patently impossible to use the damper pedal with the left leg crossed over the right, as in the photograph on the back of the box. That said, Michelangeli himself did not have more complete finger-control than Gould did, and the machined perfection of Gould’s trills and other ornaments, and the diamond brilliance of his scales and runs, are a phenomenon in a very special class of their own. This disc is the Gould we know and either love or do not love. He is on his familiar 18th-century territory with J S Bach, C P E Bach and Scarlatti. He has a manifest empathy with the 18th-century idiom, or at ... Read More:

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Bach: Two- and Three-Part Inventions (The Glenn Gould Edition)

from: Sony Classics

March 08, 1993
I somehow seem to have caught a certain negativity of feeling towards Gould. People told me he was a showman, not really a musician, too egotistical to let the music really shine through. So it was with trepidation that I listened to this recording for the first time (the first time I had heard Gould.

All of my other recordings of Bach are by women, namely Roslyn Tureck and Martha Argerich. I somehow believed that only a woman could really have the patience to devote their time to such unpretentious music (well, unpretentious compared to someone like Prokofiev, which Argerich plays so I don't know what I was thinking!) And yet somehow my Roslyn Tureck recordings never seemed to hit the spot.

Now I have heard Gould, and I shall never look back!! What masterful ... Read More:

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Bach - Keyboard Concertos

from: Sony Classics

June 19, 1995
Glenn Gould's view of concerto form was largely negative, but the baroque concerto with its less flamboyant solo role was more acceptable to him. Here we have 6 concertos, wonderfully integrated between orchestra & soloist. No.1 is the most substantial & achieves transcendental levels even for Bach. Gould's playing is equal to the greatness of the music, displaying fluidity in the outer movements & intensity in the adagio. The other concertos meet with similar success: try the largo from no.5 where Gould plays a single note melody against plucked string background...who else could achieve such a poignant result? Concertos 3&7 will be familiar as violin concertos but they succeed equally well in Gould's performances. All the orchestral parts come from a time before specialist, ... Read More:

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Glenn Gould - the Alchemist

by: Glenn Gould

September 10, 2007
Glenn Gould's view of concerto form was largely negative, but the baroque concerto with its less flamboyant solo role was more acceptable to him. Here we have 6 concertos, wonderfully integrated between orchestra & soloist. No.1 is the most substantial & achieves transcendental levels even for Bach. Gould's playing is equal to the greatness of the music, displaying fluidity in the outer movements & intensity in the adagio. The other concertos meet with similar success: try the largo from no.5 where Gould plays a single note melody against plucked string background...who else could achieve such a poignant result? Concertos 3&7 will be familiar as violin concertos but they succeed equally well in Gould's performances. All the orchestral parts come from a time before specialist, ... Read More: