The year has brought no more valuable reissue than this. In honor of Glenn Gould’s 70th birthday, Sony has remastered the famous recordings of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations that framed his remarkable ...

Concert pianists are notoriously temperamental, but with good reason: Their pianos are, too. Why else would J.S. Bach specify a "well-tempered clavier"? The modern piano is a jury-rigged contraption ...

Our view of a composer is a mosaic, whose tiles are the insights drawn from hearing dozens, perhaps hundreds, of performances — in concert, through headphones, in our memory. Every musician — every ...

Bach: Three Part Inventions; Berg: Allegro form Piano Sonata No. 1; Webern: Piano Variations, Op. 27; Krekek: Allegretto piaceovole & Adagio for Piano Sonata No. 3; Bach: selections from The Art of ...

Bach, “Goldberg Variations,” performed by pianist Glenn Gould (CBC Records PSCD 2007); Bach, “Goldberg Variations,” performed by Gould (Sony Classical SMK 52 685) Gould was a great mythmaker, and his ...

Glenn Gould's extraordinary career was bracketed by the Goldberg Variations. It was his first recording of the work, in 1955, that established Gould as a pianistic force of exceptional gifts, while ...

The classical-music world seems to run on birthday celebrations plucked from its endless roll call of dead masters (is this The classical-music world seems to run on birthday celebrations plucked from ...

Few pianists are more closely identified with a single work than Glenn Gould. Though over his short career he played and recorded a vast range of the keyboard repertoire – from William Byrd and ...

How a pianist tackles the opening C major Prelude of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier can often set the tone for what follows. You’d expect Glenn Gould’s quirky traversal to encompass extremes of tempo ...

There are so many reference recordings of this repertoire. Janssen seems comparatively straight after Glenn Gould, but he’s much easier to live with in the long term. And while I love the exquisite ...