Word: goulds
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...Glenn Gould, piano...
...many quarters, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould (1932-1982) is remembered mainly for his personal eccentricity. Gould's quirks are legendary: he played in a chair so low his face was only inches from the keyboard, never gave a public concert after the early 1960s (he thought listening to music should be a solitary experience), and wore winter jackets in the heat of summer...
...Gould was a bizarre person, his many recordings also show him as a brilliant, unusual musician with spectacular digital agility. Best known for his Bach interpretations (he recorded all of Bach's solo keyboard works), Gould almost never played the music of Romantic composers like Chopin, Liszi and Rachmaninoff, whose compositions are the bread and butter of so many virtuosos...
...surprising, then, that CBS decided to re-release Gould recordings of Romantic-era music as the third volume of its ongoing Glenn Gould Legacy series. (The first two volumes contain music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn; a fourth, of 20th century works, will be released in September.) The assortment of music on this three-record set, released last month, is very odd for a Romantic piano music collection: three sonatinas by Jean Sibelius, an obscure sonata by Richard Strauss, two transcriptions by Gould of highlights from Wagner operas, and more conventional repertoire by Brahms and Grieg...
...this collection of pieces seems strange, so do Gould's performances. The actual sound of Gould's piano is quite unusual (the only piano he played for recordings sounds like it's one-quarter harpsichord), as is his approach to these pieces. Gould's renditions--with generally slow tempos, accentuated inner voices, and understated pedalling--seem a deliberate attempt to fly in the face of the norms of "Romantic" virtuoso pianism...