7. Glenn GouldBach: The Goldberg Variations

I wasn’t listening to this when it first came out in 1955 – I wasn’t aware of Glenn Gould or any of that kind of music at all. I came to it much later when I was trying just to listen to keyboard music, not that this music was necessarily going to influence me, but that it was just inspiring in some way. And I really became hooked on Glenn Gould. Musically, his playing was so idiosyncratic, but incredible. He wasn’t following the norms of what a classical pianist should be doing, but he was still technically ridiculously sophisticated. He went in his own direction and I really love that and the fact that he was also an interesting person. He had this piano stool that he always had about a foot off the ground at the most, and when he went into the recording studio he’d have a scarf and a long, heavy jacket, so even back then he just looked like a rock star, too. 

I came to him a little bit late, but I tried to catch up, and I listened quite a few times to both of the recordings of The Goldberg Variations, which are both landmark solo piano pieces. For me, the first one seems to have a bit more of an edge, although I’m not sophisticated enough to know all the intricacies of different interpretations. Sometimes he would hum along with his playing. When we went to Japan one time I found one of his recordings where they’d electronically removed that humming, but I really missed it.