There are but few examples in the history of the performing arts of reputations made literally

overnight. A single concert given in Washington in the mid-fifties was to reveal the name of a young
pianist destined to write a unique and probably determining page of this history, Glenn Gould. Only a
few months later Glenn Gould made his first recording for which he had chosen J.S. Bachs Goldberg
variations, one of the most imposing monuments of keyboard literature. A music, which in his own
words are first thirty remarkable views of an entirely unremarkably ground base theme. views,
which like snapshots, randomly filed, ranged back and forth across the decades, revealing at one
moment the sturdy contrapuntal craft of bass maturity, at another the indulgent exhibitionism of his
youth and at all the best moments the passionate asceticism of his old age. Engaged in the structure
of the music, detached from the instrument which he has mastered to perfection, Glenn Gould
seems to be possessed when he plays with a kind of clinical ecstasy. Thinking as a composer, he
identifies creatively with the work performed, and can therefore allow himself a critical and non
serveill attitude towards the score. Immersed in the work, he wished the listener also to become part
of the creative process, for if one put less emphasis on the notion of individual and separate identity,
composer, interpreter and listener should be in a state to reclaim the unity shattered by the artistic
concepts of the romantic age. in pursuit of a higher calling, after 8 years of an unprecedented carrier,
Glenn Gould decided to withdraw willingly and definitively from the international concert circuit.
Harnessing the undisputed intellectual power that only solitude can give, he undertook a manifold
enterprise as pianist, composer and writer. A kind of meditation in action on the concept of
communication in the era of technology and of the chargeable machine. Sketching is out, etching is in
and all these musical productions ever since has been exclusively derived from the recording studio.
This is where we joined him, when a quarter of a century after his debut, he was about to record a
new version of the Goldberg variations.

GG: you know the thing about