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Getting to know ... Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould - Biography:

Glenn Herbert Go uld (September 25, 1932–October 4, 1982) was a celebrated Canadian pianist, noted especially for his recordings of Johann Sebastian Bach. He gave up live performances in 1964, dedicating himself to the recording studio for the rest of his career. Life Gould was born Glenn Gold in Toronto, Ontario. His family later changed their name to Gould as anti-semitism swept Canada in the 30's. After being taught piano by his mother, whose grandfather was a cousin of Edvard Grieg, Gould attended the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto from the age of ten. There he studied piano with Alberto Guerrero, organ with Frederick C. Silvester, and theory with Leo Smith. In 1945 he gave his first public performance (at the organ) and the following year made his first appearance with an orchestra (the Toronto Symphony Orchestra) in a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. His first public recital followed in 1947, and his first recital on CBC radio came in 1950. This was the beginning of a long association with the radio and with recording in general. In 1957, Gould made a concert trip to the Soviet Union. He was the first North American to play there after the Second World War. On April 10, 1964, Gould gave his last public performance, in Los Angeles, California, and for the rest of his life he concentrated on his other interests: making recordings, writing, broadcasting, documentaries (see below), and composing (although he produced few works as a composer). Gould died in 1982 in Toronto after suffering a massive stroke. He is buried in Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Gould's first record came in 1955. For it he chose the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. It was a piece with which he was to become closely associated, playing it in full or in part at many of his recitals. One of his very last recordings was also of the Goldbergs, one of the few pieces which Gould recorded twice in the studio. Both recorded versions are critically acclaimed. The two recordings are very different, the first highly energetic and often at frenetic tempos, the second slower and more introspective. Gould recorded many of Bach's other keyboard works, including the complete Well-Tempered Clavier and the keyboard concertos. For his only record at the organ, he recorded around half of The Art of Fugue. Gould also recorded pieces by many prominent piano composers, though he was outspoken in his criticism of some of them, apparently not caring for Frederic Chopin, for example. In a radio interview, when asked if he didn't find himself wanting to play Chopin, he replied: "No, I don't. I play it in a weak moment — maybe once a year or twice a year for myself. But it doesn't convince me." He was fond of some of the lesser known byways of the repertoire, such as early keyboard music of Orlando Gibbons, and also made critically acclaimed recordings of little known piano music by Jean Sibelius, Richard Strauss and Paul Hindemith. His recordings of the complete Arnold Schoenberg piano works are also highly regarded. Incidentally, one of Gould's performances of Prelude and Fugue in C, No.1 from Book 2 of Well-Tempered Clavier was determined by a Carl Sagan-chaired committee at NASA to be one of the greatest achievements of mankind. A recording can be found on the Voyager Golden Record, a 30 cm (12-inch approx.) gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The disk was placed on the spacecraft Voyager 1, which is now approaching interstellar space and is the most distant human-made object from Earth. Movie Sountracks In addition to Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, Gould's recorded music has been featured in many films, both during his life and after his death. Slaughterhouse Five (1972) and The Terminal Man (1974) featured selections from his 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations, while Hannibal (2001) contains the Aria from his 1982 recording. The Wars (1983) features Gould playing music of Richard Strauss and Johannes Brahms. Triplets of Belleville (2003) includes a segment in which an animated Glenn Gould with greatly exaggerated mannerisms plays the Prelude No. 2 in C minor, from J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book One.

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