Some classical artists can sing, mock, or whistle musically – like Toscanini and Casals – but none of them are as notable as piano artist Glenn Gould in his bizarre chord style.

Gould’s mother taught her son to sing the music while playing the piano at home when he was a kid. It’s too late for Gould to realize that he still has this habit of performing and recording. Gould couldn’t get rid of the habit and it became one of his characteristics: “I can’t lack it. If it were possible, I would have left it.” He himself accepted it with optimistic humor. Once, after producer Howard Scott showed himself desperate, Gould appeared in the studio with a World War II mask. In the 1970s, producer Andrew Kazdin of the Canadian broadcaster CBC told me, “We put up a broad-sounding curtain right on Gould’s right, somewhat between the microphone and his face.” The idea was eventually rejected simply because “Glenn must hear the sounds that the band makes while you’re playing.”

Non-compliance

Glenn Gould was born on September 25, 1932, in Toronto, Canada, and was educated on the shores of the quiet Lake Ontario. Gould’s talent was evident from his early poetry, and although his parents did not urge him to become a brilliant magician, at the age of 15, Gould was a professional pianist and soon achieved national fame. In addition to his 20s, Gould has been recorded through radio, television, recordings, articles, lectures and compositions.

From the very beginning, Gould was a disobedient artist. Preferring structurally complex music, he despised early Romantic works as well as Impression, which held a central place in the standard piano catalogue. Instead, he was more interested in Elizabeth, Baroque, Classical, late Romantic and early 20th century works.

Gould is an artist with a special knowledge and talent in illuminating syntax and structure, and his way of playing is also a profound and dynamic expression of rhythm. He has the technique of a master artist, although he overturns many of the practice of playing the piano, such as avoiding the use of maintenance pedals and handling interruptions. Believing that the role of the performer was incredibly creative, he offered unique, profoundly personal and sometimes shocking interpretations (extreme tempoes, bizarre movements, the striking rhythm), especially in Mozart’s, Beethoven’s and Brahms’ orchestral works.

In 1955, Gould performed on American soil. A year later, his first recording with Columbia, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, was released and started his international concert career. Gould was widely praised despite his distinct musical style; his exotic stage style and his other bizarre personalities colored his reputation. But he hates performing – “At the concert, I feel like I’m a remarkable actor” – and despite receiving a lot of requests, he restricts his appearance to humour (less than 40 concerts abroad). Finally, in 1964, he permanently withdrew from concert life.

Gould thinks, “The purpose of art is not to let adrenal hormones burst for a moment, but rather to build step by step and for a lifetime a magical state of peace.” Prior to his retirement, he was not satisfied with being a concert artist; he performed radio and television programmes, published articles on musical and non-musical subjects, and continued to compose. Gould likes to call himself “a Canadian pen, composer, broadcaster, who just happens to play the piano in his spare time.”

Gould lived a quiet, lonely and barren life. He kept his privacy, his romantic relationships with women were never made public. “Isolation is a sure way to human happiness.”) Heins a modern apartment and a small studio, leaving Toronto only when work requires it or when occasionally on vacation in the countryside.

In the summer of 1982, he made his first recording as a conductor. Then he planned to quit performing, retreat to the countryside and spend time writing and composing. But shortly after his 50th birthday, Gould suddenly died of a stroke. Since then, he has had an unusual life. His rich work has been widely disseminated. He’s the subject of an enormous amount of documentation in many languages. And he was the source of inspiration for workshops, exhibitions, festivals, radio and television shows, novels, plays, musical works, poetry, audiovisual arts and films (there were 32 short films about Gould).

Gould and Bach

Bach and Gould, Gould and Bach – they are almost always mentioned in the same breath, the greatest composer and “greatest pianist of all time” in the words of Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard (1931 –1989). Without a doubt, Bach’s music was the constant great thing in Gould’s life. Nothing describes Gould’s uniqueness as a pianist better than the 153 Bach works he recorded, some of which were recorded several times. There has never been a precedent for such a special way of playing Bach, and no one has ever surpassed Gould in this respect. There are some works that he dealt with almost as a shield, especially the Italian Concerto BWV 971 and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue BWV 903 – about the latter he said, “I hate it so sincerely.” It is clear that Gould has deviated from the very typical syntax principles in Bach’s fuga: “Bach keeps writing fuga. For his organs, it is the most appropriate target of pursuit, and there is no other category by which Bach’s artistic development is judged so accurately.” Gould acknowledged, the only music he liked was dialogues. At the age of seven, Gould went with his mother through the first 24 preludes and fugues of the Legislature. It was with 22 voices of the BWV 867 that the 11-year-old Gould won the only contest he participated in – the Kiwanis Music Festival in February 1944.

The first Goldberg Variations recording with Columbia in June 1955 unexpectedly put Gould in the center of the world’s attention and secured him a place in the temple of great pianists. Bach became the cornerstone of his record catalogue. And the second studio record, Goldberg Variations, took Gould’s career into a full orbit in April 1981. Though the two recordings may differ, not just in the way they choose the tempo, they’re actually the right time shots. There were also three live recordings in 1954, 1958 and 1959, each of which revealed a completely different and equally characteristic look at the work. Would Gould ever be upset about being shortened to Goldberg Variations? In a later interview, he clearly expressed his doubts: “I think it’s a very gourmet product. And as a work, as a concept, I don’t think it’s really good.” Is this one of Gould’s typical provocative statements? Whatever the answer, his recordings are still milestones in recording history, with which the audience, depending on the mood at which it is listened, will prioritize the brilliant flair of the first record and choose the “quality at the earliest” that Gould describes himself as the elite characteristic of the latter.

Gould and Mozart

“How badly Mozart became a composer” was the provocative title of a Gould theme for PBL in 1968. No composer has suffered so much of Gould’s criticism as Mozart – his “pleasantism” is highly suspicious to purists like Gould. Gould said that when Mozart died in 1791 at the age of 35, “he died too late, not too early.” Gould felt that if he had to predict Mozart’s style through the last 300 works in the catalogue that Köchel listed, if he lived to the age of decay, Mozart would have “transformed into a kind of brick between Weber and Spohr”. Despite this, Gould recorded the Piano Concerto of the K 491, four fantasies, and a total of 17 piano sonatas – some of which could not breathe fast, while others were slow to play (including the opening chapter for the K 311 Sonata of the Chancellor). Critics spoke of “the most disgusting record of all time”: “Everything evokes the image of an unusually early, but evil boy, trying to play his piano teacher.” However, as usual with Gould, even his Mozart performances revealed the true wonders of wisdom: he was one of the few pianists who played Marcia alla turca in the K 331 sonata at a slowed Allegretto speed.

Gould and Beethoven

“Admit, Mr. Gould, you intend to suspect Beethoven!” In 1970, the Toronto Globe and Mail posted an article under this title to mark the 200th anniversary of the German composer’s birth. It takes the form of a crazy dialogue between the pianist “G.G.” and the psychiatrist “g.g.” detailing his love-hatred relationship with Beethoven. Extreme performances (such as the horrendous fast speed in the first chapter of the Piano Sonata Op. 111 Gould recorded in 1956, or slow to miserable speed in the first chapter of Allegro assai of the Piano Sonata “Appassionata” op. 57) impressed with the demolition to rebuild the work and prompted critical writings about Gould’s pointing pen on sulfuric acid. So these performances are proof of your absolutely serious attachment to Beethoven’s music. In February 1961, his first television show for CBC was titled “The Subject Is Beethoven” and many of his articles were intended to deliberately provoke and ridicule masterpieces such as Piano Concerto No. 5 and Symphony No. 9. Despite this, Beethoven was still a composer with a large number of his recordings (the second-largest in Gould’s recording category after Bach). He not only recorded five piano concerto, but also 25 and a half sonatas (Piano Sonata op. 22 with only two chapters so far unreleased), two volumes of Bagatelle, three adaptations, some auditorium works, Symphony No. 5 and No. Six by Liszt. Obviously Gould was fascinated by what he called “the impossible mixture of naivety and complexity that made Beethoven so unpredictable.”