Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould and the Vacuum cleaner

"....... the inner ear of the imagination is very much more powerful a stimulant than is any amount of outward observation."

The second consequence was that it became more difficult for him to feel satisfied with the actual sound of music, his own performances as well as those of other musicians. It forced him to become a perfectionist. From now on, whenever a work had to be prepared for a concert, he had to struggle mightily in trying to match his playing as closely as possible to the inner model of what it should ideally sound like.
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In fact, it was in Russia that he first noticed what he called "accruing bad habits" in his interpretation of Bach: "all sorts of dynamic hang-ups, crescendi and diminuendi that have no part in the structure, in the skeleton of that music, and defy one to portray the skeleton adequately. The reason... was that I had to play in very large halls which weren't set up with Bach in mind certainly, and try to project it to that man up there in the top balcony.... And I added this hairpin and that hairpin to a phrase that didn't demand it, didn't need it, and that ultimately destroyed the fabric of the music.

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Although Glenn rarely re-recorded anything that he had made earlier, he reconsidered in the case of the Goldbergs , which were still selling well in their 1955 version and were widely considered one of his greatest triumphs. He felt compelled to do this for several reasons. The technology of recording had improved enormously over the intervening years. "Someone had the nerve to invent something called Stereo. Then a few years later someone else had the audacity to invent a process called Dolby which invalidated the quality of sound in which [the earlier Goldberg recording] was done."

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The new Goldberg recording, and the tape made of the recording, were greatly successful, and the debate still goes onas to which is the "better" performance, that of 1955 or the one of 1981. It's a fruitless debate because both recordings are superb. If you want youthful abandon, spontaneity, and a miraculous technique, listen to the first. If you prefer stateliness, mathematical precision, the reflective wisdom of middle age, and the clarity of digital sound, listen to the second. In the opening and closing "Aria" of the 1981 recording, Glenn takes much more time, about twice as much as in the 1955 version, and some variations are also played at a more leisurely tempo.