Search - Stewart Goodyear :: For Glenn Gould

It was the year Glenn Gould died when I first heard his legendary name, and it was his Bach that introduced me to his playing. His sound struck me immediately...one that was compelling and uncompromising. It was not a piano sound designed to speak words of mere prettiness, but of an individual truth.

Was Gould cerebral or emotional? One heard in his interpretations a mind passionately fierce in his conviction.
Similarly, his concert programs were striking. To the concertgoer used to seeing a program of Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt, Gould's programs of Gibbons, Sweelinck, Bach, Webern, and Berg must have seemed daunting on paper.

I had the great honour of performing that exact program, the same program with which Gould presented his US debut at the Phillips Collection, and his debut at the Ladies Morning Music Club in Montreal. Never before had a concert program made so much sense to me. I hope the two audiences would say the same...I know my spirits were lifted playing this program. Both concerts were two of the most profound and meaningful musical experiences of my life.

Orlando Gibbons and Jan Sweelinck were composers I knew from singing their motets at a choir school I attended in downtown Toronto. I had no idea until I started learning Gould's program that these two composers had works for solo keyboard! Their harmonies, melodic structure, and ornamentation were just how I remembered them back in the choir school days!

Bach's Sinfonias also brought me back to my childhood, when I would sing the middle line in each three-part invention, while playing the other two voices on the piano. The 5th Partita took me back to a dance class I took in school, learning the steps to an Allemande, Courante, and Sarabande.

Alban Berg was introduced to me by way of Wozzeck, and ever since, I always felt the composer as operatic. Berg's Piano Sonata, to me, was as potent as Isolde's Liebestod.

My favourite recording of Glenn Gould is his album of Brahms' Intermezzi. I felt, through that recording, that I got closer to understanding more who Gould was as an artist. In the composers discussed before, I heard Gould the passionate theorist, dancer, and singer. In Brahms, I finally heard Gould, the salon artist, the homebody cozying up in his summer home in Lake Simcoe.

My decision to record Glenn Gould's program came right after performing it in Montreal. While paying homage to one of the great Canadian legends, I was being transported to childhood memories of growing up in Toronto, Gould's home town, studying at the Royal Conservatory, Gould's home training, and being an artist from Canada, Gould's country. - Stewart Goodyear