A
virtuoso pianist with eccentric personality, Glenn Gould was one of the great
performers of classical music of the 20th century and also a noteworthy
contributor to the scholarly debate on music theory and philosophy. Gould
garnered international acclaim in 1955 with his seminal recording of Johann
Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations,
a piece that he would curiously revisit in 1981 shortly before his death. The
story goes that Bach’s Goldberg Variations
were composed in the 1740s to be performed by the young harpsichordist Johann
Gottlieb Goldberg, arguably at the behest of the sleepless Count Kaiserling who
longed for music to soothe him during his long nights. Bach decided to compose
30 variations on an aria in a ternary pattern, where every third variation of
the aria is called a canon, followed by a genre piece and an arabesque. The
result is outstanding and Gould’s performances of 1955 and 1981, while both
brilliant in their own right, are rather different in nature. The 1981 version
of Goldberg Variations somewhat lacks
the vivacity of its 1955 counterpart, and displays a more toned down and
pondered interpretation of Bach’s masterpiece. Have a listen to a segment of Goldberg Variations,
which includes my favorite variation 14 and should constitute a fine
introduction to Gould’s virtuosity:
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