Pianist Glenn Gould was born on September 25, 1932, in Toronto, Canada. He passed away on October 4, 1982. From the age of three, he began learning piano from his mother, a relative of the Norwegian composer Grieg. He apparently had a secret dream of becoming a pianist from an early age, refusing invitations to play marbles. At age seven, he was accepted into the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. He studied organ and piano there, and made his debut as an organist in 1945. His piano teacher, Alberto Guerrero, taught him the unique technique of stretching his fingers. In 1946, he made his official debut as a pianist, performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. That same year, he graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music with honors, becoming the youngest student to do so.
He made his Washington debut in 1955, earning the Washington Post's praise that "there is no pianist like him in any era." His debut recording of Bach's "Goldberg Variations" became a bestseller. This recording, along with a re-recording in 1981, remains the definitive version of the work, and subsequent recordings are consistently compared to Gould's.
He subsequently dedicated himself to concert performances and recordings, focusing on pre-Classical works by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, as well as works by the Second Viennese School, such as Schoenberg and Berg. He also favored works by contemporary Canadian composers such as Krchenek. He rarely performed the so-called great composers of piano history, such as Chopin and Liszt. He considered Bizet's Chromatic Variations to be the greatest masterpiece of Romantic piano music. Each piece was interpreted with Gould's unique style. This is said to be due to his analysis of the music from the composer's perspective, rather than that of a performer. He retired from concert activities in 1964, his final recital in Chicago. Since then, he has focused solely on recording, radio, and television broadcasts, as well as writing. He also composed, publishing piano sonatas and piano arrangements of Wagner's Meistersinger Prelude. In 1981, he re-recorded the Goldberg Variations. This time, the arias are significantly slower than in the 1955 recording. He died of a stroke in October 1982 at the age of 50. Vladimir Horowitz, the great pianist with whom he is said to have disliked, sent him farewell flowers. His recordings of Scriabin's Sonata No. 5 and Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7 are thought to have been motivated by his hostility toward Horowitz. In his youth, Gould was handsome, and the great conductor Leonard Bernstein, with whom he collaborated on Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1, remarked, "There is no one more beautiful than Gould." There is an anecdote that the two men disagreed on the interpretation of this piece, and Bernstein gave a speech explaining it before the performance. He was also rumored to have exhibited eccentric behavior, such as wearing gloves and a scarf even in the middle of summer, placing a tiger skin on an unusually low chair, and humming while performing. He was very nervous, and during one recording, he stopped playing when he sensed a draft. Many of his recordings are sold by CBS Sony.
