Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Glenn Gould

[Herbert Gould, remembering his son's infancy]

As soon as Glenn was old enough to be held on his grandmother's knee at the piano, he would never pound the keyboard as most children will with the whole hand, striking a number of keys at a time; instead he would always insist on pressing down a single key and holding it down until the resulting sound had completely died away. The fading vibrations entirely fascinated him.

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Glenn had no difficulty directing his mind. He played multiple chess games blindfolded, memorised complex scores while talking on the telephone, and listened to two radios simultaneously while studying Schoenberg's difficult Opus 23. He aroused attention, however, when he appeard to fidget on stage during the orchestral tuttis of the Beethoven concerto in his first performance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. The critic had no idea that before leaving home for the concert Glenn had bid a loving farewell to Nicky, his shedding dog. By the time of the concerto's rondo movement, he realised his black trousers were covered in dog hair and was busying himself picking them off. All went well until he lost track of which tutti was in progress, but he quickly composed his thoughts and played well to the end: "I had learned the fist valuable lesson of my association with the T.S.O - either pay attention or keep short-haired dogs"

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