Glenn Gould Read Online Free Page B

clever for the sake of being clever, for the sake of showing off !” 31
    At the same time, Gould would often agree to, sometimes even favour, the phrase recreative (rather than creative ) artist for his own musical interventions at the keyboard. Every interpretation is a new work in its own right, something especially true of the Bach oeuvre, whose lack of specified tempi or phrasing leave decisions about pacing, articulation, and ornamentation largely in the hands of its player or conductor. Though one works in the vertical dimension of the stave, herding the motive along as it performs the business of progression from moment to moment, one can only do so with a keen awareness of the horizontal dimension of the work, its architecture—another issue for interpretation. Add to this the dynamic and colour possibilities available to the pianist, unknown to the composer working on clavichord or harpsichord, and it is easy to see that there is indeed such a thing as a genius of interpretation.
    On January 3, 1964, Time magazine, that arbiter of mainstream legitimacy, proclaimed the thirty-one-year-old Gould’s recording career “little short of genius.” He had yet to record even half of what he would eventually produce in the studio, including many of his now most-prized albums.
    All that lay far in the future. His parents later insisted they did not want Gould to have the skewed life of a musical freak—the words Mozart and prodigy were banned from the household lexicon—but from the start his mother was convinced that he would be a supremely gifted musician, in particular as a concert pianist. Music was everywhere in his life from a point before birth: anticipating a later fad, during pregnancy Gould’s mother played music often to stimulate fetal development.
    Gould’s first public performance came on June 5, 1938, at age five: he accompanied his parents’ vocal duet at the thirtieth-anniversary celebration of the Business Men’s Bible Class, of which his father was a member. In August of the same year he was a contestant in a piano competition held at the Canadian National Exhibition but did not win. On December 9, his second public performance was at the Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in Toronto. His playing astonished the audience, and young Glenn began saying he wanted to be a concert pianist.
    By 1944 Gould was competing in Kiwanis Music Festivals, an experience he would later discuss with derision. Winning a $200 prize in the first of these also brought his first press coverage. He was twelve. The next year, on December 12, 1945, he made his professional organ debut, graduating from churches and provincial competitions to the Eaton Auditorium in downtown Toronto. He played Mendelssohn’s Sonata no. 6, the Concerto Movement by Dupuis, and the Fugue in F Major by J.S. Bach. A review in the Toronto Evening Telegram called him a genius—the first public application of the magic word.
    On May 8, 1946, he played for the first time with an orchestra, performing the first movement of Beethoven’s Concerto no. 4 with the Toronto Conservatory Symphony at Massey Hall. The critics were respectful. On January 14 and 15, 1947, he made his professional debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, performing all four movements of Beethoven’s Concerto no. 4. Critics noted his distracting onstage fidgets, later explained as the result of allergenic dog hair on his suit.
    Really? On October 20 of the same year Gould gave his first full recital in the Eaton Auditorium’s “International Artists” series. He played five sonatas by Scarlatti, Beethoven’s “Tempest” Sonata, the Passacaille in B Minor by Couperin,Liszt’s Au Bord d’une Source, the Waltz in A-flat Major (op. 42) and Impromptu in F-sharp (op. 36) by Chopin, and Mendelssohn’s Andante and Rondo Capriccioso. Reviews were positive. They also laid stress on the growing evidence of unusual