Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould – Bach: Partitas Nos. 5 & 6, BWV 829 & 830 (1957/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 40:43 minutes | 339 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

The Fifth Partita was “the worst Bach recording I’ve ever made. It was also the most pianistic. It was perhaps the one that the connoisseur of the piano would like best. It’s the one I like least because it’s least Bach, it’s least me vis-à-vis Bach in any case; it’s full of all sorts of dynamic hang-ups, it’s full of crescendi and diminuendi that have no part in the structure, in the skeleton of that music.” Serious or tongue-in-cheek, who can tell?
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Glenn Gould – Bach: Partitas Nos. 3 & 4, BWV 827 & 828; Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914 (1963/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 45:56 minutes | 450 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

In 1962-3 Bach was the uncontested lodestar of Gould’s concert and recording activities—including those for the CBC television network, for which he produced the programs Glenn Gould on Bach and The Anatomy of Fugue. Although he played the D-major Partita several times in recital before venturing with it into the studio, the “concert drop-out” already loomed on the horizon …
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Glenn Gould – Bach: Italian Concerto in F Major, BWV 971; Partitas Nos. 1 & 2, BWV 825 & 826 (1960/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 39:47 minutes | 396 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Gould’s tenth recording for Columbia was accompanied by a two-part film portrait entitled Off the Record / On the Record – a sure indication of the star status he had by now attained. He was considered “music’s most successful hipster” and “the object of a sort of James Dean cult” – perhaps classical music’s first pop star. For the time being he still played along with the media hype …
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Glenn Gould – Johann Sebastian Bach – Toccatas BWV 910-916 (1980/2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:20:18 minutes | 721 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Music

There is an often-repeated adage that piano recordings of the Bach’s Toccatas, like those of the Goldberg Variations, fall into two categories: Glenn Gould and not Glenn Gould. These recordings embody the elements of Gould’s Bach without necessarily falling under the shadow of his larger-than-life musical persona. The performance style favours smooth legato, reserved ornamentation and an even balance between the hands. He is rarely tempted to emphasise fugal subjects or thematically significant bass lines. His touch is delicate rather than muscular; everything is confident and decisive but nothing is emphatic or overstated. Gould at his finest!
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Glenn Gould – A Consort of Musicke Bye William Byrde and Orlando Gibbons (1971)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:49 minutes | 411 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sony Classical

“Orlando Gibbons is my favorite composer—always has been. I can’t think of anybody who represents the end of an era better than Orlando Gibbons does.” This profession of faith in the great English virginalist is more than an act of defiance: it harks back to Gould’s early childhood experiences with Puritanism.

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Glenn Gould – The Complete Columbia Album Collection (2015 Remastered Edition)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz  | Time – 58:16:23 minutes | 31,6 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | © Sony Classical

78 DISKS – 960 TRACKS – TOTAL LENGTH: 58:16:23

In 1955 Glenn Gould signed his exclusive contract with Columbia Masterworks, and remained with the label until his untimely death in 1982. Gould s first release, Bach s Goldberg Variations, released in January 1956, took the music world by storm, and immediately established the 22-year-old Canadian pianist as one of the most brilliant, original, charismatic and provocative classical performers of his time.

Born in Toronto on September 25, 1932, Gould studied at first with his mother, and subsequently with Alberto Guerrero at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. He began performing concerts as a teenager, while his first CBC radio recital in 1950 launched his love affair with the microphone . By his late teens Gould s artistic persona was fully formed. Right at the start he favoured unusual programs, with Bach, Byrd, Gibbons, Sweelinck, Haydn and Beethoven on one side, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Hindemith on the other, broaching the Romantics selectively. In 1957 Gould became the first North American to perform in the Soviet Union since World War II. After less than a decade of international concertizing, Gould retired from the stage at 31 in 1964 to focus on recording, television work, creating innovative radio documentaries, and writing articles and essays.

Few pianists are so easily identifiable as Gould, whose rhythmic acuity, breathtakingly clean articulation, and scintillating technical aplomb still leave a formidable individual imprint, from his brashly controversial Mozart Sonata cycle and spacious Brahms Intermezzi to his fiercely committed 20th-century music interpretations and, of course, his bracing, joyous and highly influential Bach.

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Georg Friedrich Handel – Suites for Harpsichord Nos. 1-4, HWV 426-429 – Glenn Gould (1972/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:28 minutes | 475 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | © Columbia Records

Gould’s only recording on harpsichord owed its existence to a transportation mishap suffered by his Steinway CD 318. Once again the critics’ reactions ranged from rejection to outrage. Gould himself was so satisfied with the results that he once contemplated recording Part 2 of The Art of the Fugue on this instrument—a Wittmayer harpsichord.

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Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Sonatas Nos. 30-32 – Glenn Gould (1956/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 55:09 minutes | 303 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | Digital Booklet | © Columbia Records

Sensation yields to scandal: Gould’s feisty and headstrong treatment of the final triptych in Beethoven’s pianistic “New Testament” outraged the critics no less than his sleeve notes, in which he claimed of op. 111 that “the piece is weak in spots; it needs greater speed. Especially the first movement is such a bad piece that I wanted to get on to the finale.”

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Music from Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ feat. Glenn Gould (1972/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 38:28 minutes | 371 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | © Sony Classical

Gould was an enthusiastic moviegoer. All the more regrettable, then, that his film work is so meagerly documented. To create the soundtrack for George Roy Hill’s film version of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Gould used his own Bach recordings as well as the Fourth Brandenburg with Pablo Casals conducting the Marlboro Festival Orchestra.

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Arnold Schoenberg – Complete Songs, Vol. 2 – Glenn Gould (1972/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:01:00 minutes | 571 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | @ Columbia Records/Sony Music

Another release in Columbia’s grand and courageous attempt to record the complete works of Schoenberg. This release anticipated the onehundredth birthday celebrations of a composer to whom Gould also devoted a book (Arnold Schoenberg—A Perspective) and a ten-part CBC radio series (Music of Today: Arnold Schoenberg).

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Arnold Schoenberg – The Music of Arnold Schoenberg Vol. 4: Songs and Works for Solo Piano – Glenn Gould (1966/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:55:03 minutes | 1,03 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | @ Columbia Records/Sony Music Entertainment

Volume 1 of Schoenberg’s lieder, recorded between 11 June 1964 and 18 November 1965, marked a watershed in Gould’s career. Following Howard Scott, Joseph Scianni, Paul Myers, and finally Thomas Frost, the young Andrew Kazdin now shouldered the fascinating if awesome responsibility of producing Gould’s recordings—an alliance that was to last almost fifteen years.

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Arnold Schoenberg – The Music of Arnold Schoenberg Vol. 7: Chamber Music – Glenn Gould (1967/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:11:26 minutes | 704 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download – Source: Q0buz | @ Columbia Records/Sony Music Entertainment

Two titles from a Schoenberg double album that also included the Theme and Variations, op. 43b (under Eugene Ormandy), the String Trio, op. 45 (with members of the Juilliard String Quartet), and the Variations on a Recitative for organ, op. 40 (with Marilyn Mason). Gould was not particularly happy with the Ode to Napoleon: “The recording was rather more deliberate and literal in terms of the deployment of the voice than I should have liked.”

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