Glenn Gould - Bach: Goldberg Variations

1-32. Goldberg Variations

Now is a good a time as any to post Glenn Gould's landmark 1955 GOLDBERG VARIATIONS, as startling a debut in music as any, comparable to Bob Dylan or the Beatles. While Wanda Landowska's musical conception is flamboyant, fully fleshed out, even fun, Glenn Gould represents pure intellectual (and jokey) energy as well as a particular kind of quirky secular culture that was all the rage in the supposedly conformist '50s. This was the age of Holden Caufield and James Dean, not to mention Thelonious Monk and Jackson Pollock. Gould fits in with all of them, far more than any other '50s classical musician, all of whom were merely bourgeois highbrows (with the notable exception of Maria Callas and maybe Toscanini). He also delivered on the promise of this debut throughout his career. While he may have declined physically, there was no concurrent artistic leveling off. Even his failures, like his series of trashed Mozart sonatas, are as fascinating as car wrecks. @320

Goldberg Variations