The madness of genius Glenn Gould

Thanks for sharing this Kuma.  I have a box set of the complete CBC broadcast with Glenn Gould.  I don't recall seeing this one before though.  I thoroughly enjoyed this and agree with you in that he was a fascinating character.  Your title says it all.  If he were normal we wouldn't be talking about him, I guess.

Lovely to see that. Thank you.

Gould is one of my favorites. His interpretations are in another league.

Kuma,

Thanks for posting it. I watched the whole film with great interest. I never knew that Glenn Gould was so deeply involved in radio work.

Dear Kuma,

I watched the linked film and all the parts that make up the complete documentary.

I think Mrs Foss nailed it when describing Gould's way of playing Bach.

The thing about Gould's fame is that it may actually hook people on the music of Bach for example, which I think is a good thing. Some of these will then goon to widen their appreciation of Bach through other performances, and that is also a good thing in my view.

Very nice documentary in my view.

Thanks from George

George,

Another pianist who also made classical music approachable for me is Friedrich Gulda.

Very different from Gould's style but he connected the gap between jazz and classical music. And I can see the groove he's after. Yeah I know that tonal colours and harmonic richness and all that are important, too but what connected me to the classical music after all these years away from it is that rhythmic drive I have heard in Toscanini's Beethoven which I find missing from many classical recording and certainly my piano teacher did not teach me. Everything was so serious and *proper*. :/

But once I found it, I start looking for it! This is why I gravitate towards certain performers.

"In jazz, he found "the rhythmic drive, the risk, the absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught." — Gulda

I think for years, I was suffocating from that *pale academic approach* and ultimately stopped listening and playing  to the genre all together.

It's a sort of like a bad hifi in a way–Over the long run, it poisons everything and eventually you realise it's no longer a joy to listen to a music.

Dear Kuma,

You know I draw my life's energy from listening [and to a lesser extent from playing]classical music!!

Gould is an inspiration to many and let's be thankful for his contribution!

ATB from George