Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould Recording) - Reappraisal

Reappraisal

Gould commented in a 1959 interview with Alan Rich that he had begun to study the Goldberg Variations in about 1950. It was one of the first works that he had learned "entirely without my teacher", and which he had "made up my mind about relatively ". He noted that his performance view of the Variations now involved slowing the piece down: " is about the only musical change that has gone on, but it implies, I think, possibly an approach of slightly greater breadth now than at that time... I was very much in a 'let's get the show on the road and get through with it' sort of mood . I felt that to linger unduly over anything would be to take away from a sort of overall unity of things... In part it was brought about by a reaction against so much piano playing which I had heard and, in fact, part of the way in which I myself was taught, which was in the school of the Romantic pianists of the Cortot/Schnabel tradition".

Gould later became more critical of his 1955 interpretation, expressing reservations about its fast tempi and pianistic affectation. He found much of it "just too fast for comfort", and lamented the 25th variation, which sounded "like a Chopin nocturne"—to Gould, an undesirable quality. He continued, "I can no longer recognize the person who did that. To me today that piece has intensity without any sort of false glamour. Not a pianistic or instrumental intensity, a spiritual intensity."

Shortly before his death in 1982, Gould re-recorded the Goldberg Variations digitally and in stereo in the Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York City. He largely abandoned the showmanship of the 1955 performance and replaced it with a more introspective interpretation that included more calculated phrasing and ornamentation. For the 1981 version, Gould sought to unify the variations differently, through his choices of tempi: he played more of the repeats, and endeavoured to express proportional rhythmic relations between the variations. Arriving within a year of his death, the 1981 recording is popularly recognized as "autumnal", a symbolic testament to Gould's career.

In 2002, Sony issued a three-compact-disc collection titled A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations 1955 & 1981. It includes the 1955 and 1981 Goldberg recordings (the former remastered from analogue tapes), and a third disc with 1955 studio outtakes and a lengthy interview with Gould documentarian and music critic Tim Page.

In 2012, Sony issued Glenn Gould, The Complete Bach Collection of 44 discs, in which included four CDs and one DVD of Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations recordings: CD1 for 1955 recording, CD14, 1955 recording re-channeled for stereo, CD31 for his 1981 recording and CD32 for his live in Salzburg recording; DVD6:Glenn Gould Plays Bach:The Goldberg Variations.