How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
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Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#2Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#3I was trained on Bach piano literature in technique and theory from the intermediate level onward before being "allowed" to explore the corpus of works of other composers. Most impressive at the time were Gould's recordings of the Bach's harpsichord concertos [¹], esp. the second movements of No. 7 and No. 5. I learned a lot from trying to imitate his style (except for the seating...).
--- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_concertos_by_Johann_S...
Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#4I play piano and watching videos of Gould playing is fascinating. He violates every rule your piano teacher tells you about performance, from his unusually low chair made to accommodate a back injury to his habit of singing along to tunes that was often picked up in his album recordings. I especially like this performance of Beethoven's 32 variations in C minor by him [1].
Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#5If you love Glen Gould playing Bach - I’d recommend checking out Vikingur Olafsson. https://vikingurolafsson.com/media/
Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#6This is a good article.
Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#7Funny, I've been a bit obsessed with Alfred Brendel's recordings of the Schubert impromptus recently (especially No. 2).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yaUxihBZXs
He's an exceptional world class pianist and I have to imagine that the ideas in his book come from a place of deep experience. I only mention this because the LRB critic is pretty savage toward Brendel in the review and one might walk away from the review only thinking that Glenn Gould is some sort of water walker and Brendel is a joke, which is completely unwarranted.
Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#8If you haven't already seen it, I'd recommend watching Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. I'm not familiar enough with Gould's life to comment as to its accuracy as a biopic, but the film is definitely unique and interesting, painting a non-linear mosaic of his accomplishments, quirkiness, and genius.
Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#9If you love Glen Gould playing Bach - I’d recommend checking out Vikingur Olafsson. https://vikingurolafsson.com/media/
Also Rosalyn Tureck, who influenced Gould greatly
https://www.curtis.edu/academics/library/tureck-bach-researc...
Re: How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould
#10Funny, I've been a bit obsessed with Alfred Brendel's recordings of the Schubert impromptus recently (especially No. 2). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yaUxihBZXs He's an exceptional world class pianist and I have to imagine that the ideas in his book come from a place of deep experience. I only mention this because the LRB critic is pretty savage toward Brendel in the review and one might walk away from the review…
I grew up on Brendel's recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas. I still love his sincere way of playing them, that doesn't try to turn them into show-off pieces. I prefer Brendel's Beethoven to Gould's most of the time. But the limitations of Brendel's techinque are sometimes detectable in his playing. From a technical standpoint Gould is on another planet from Brendel, and I don't think Brendel himself would disagree with this.
On top of his unique approach to everything he played, Gould was one of the most technically adept pianists of all time, in league with Marc-Andre Hamelin, Yuja Wang, and only a few others.