Glenn Gould is world famous among classical music lovers for his electrifying and often controversial interpretations of Bach. They're powerful, with crystal clear counterpoint and sometimes super-humanly fast tempos.
I was very sad when, barely 50 years old, he died suddenly in 1982 without finishing the recordings of the Beethoven piano sonatas he was working on at the time. In the same vivid way I remember the Kennedy assassination, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard of Gould's death.
Here's a video of Gould practicing. He stops, restarts, sings along loudly, goes back over certain passages, steps away from the keyboard and rehearses mentally, works with one hand alone, and so on. In the last third of this brief recording, he displays his stupefying power at the keyboard.
He's so young in this video that I cried the first time I saw it: for what might have been had he lived longer, and because I missed someone I never met who nevertheless felt like a friend.
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| Glenn Gould in his youth |
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