Am I pretentious for listening to Glenn Gould?

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*with apologies to Ned

I do know what you mean about the way he's usually marketed though; I would have bought that 3 CD Goldberg set if they hadn't fucking titled it 'A Sense Of Wonder' and put his open mouth on the cover, I'm a huge fan but that cover misses the point entirely.

For a while I've been toying with the idea of learning to play the Goldberg Variations in the style of Gould in a kind of listen/repeat way with my stereo perched on top of the piano and the sheet music in front of me. I'm not sure if I could though. And I need to buy the piano first.

I was gonna say. You're not pretentious for listening to Gould, but you very well may be pretentious if you stop at Gould, in re classical pianists.

Yes.

Now: Is it pretentious to WORRY about whether you're being pretentious?

Music: Eccentric with Talent

We have a certain wekaness for eccentrics, especially when they are geniuses. For a long time we have been hearing the unusual behavior of a twenty-five-year-old Canadian pianist named Glenn Gould, who soaks his hands and arms in hot water for twenty minutes before each performance, takes pills like peanuts, thrashes about on his specially designed piano stool like an electrified scarecrow, hums audibly while playing, and occasionally harangues his audience. We have also heard some of his records, especially the glittering supercharged piano transcription of Bach's Goldberg Variations (a work that ordinarily we can take or leave), which convinced us of his really formidable talent.
So, when we heard he was in town, we visited him. We weren't disappointed. A lank [and?] tousle-haired young man who looks a little like a non-lachrymose Johnny Ray, he managed to thrash about quite a bit even in an over-stuffed hotel chair. He also, for an eccentric, made eminently good sense.
"I think you can approach the piano in two ways," he told us. "As a romantic instrument, all curves and color, maybe a little cute, a little muddy. Or you can treat it like a series of plateaus, angular, architectural. Like the harpsichord. That's my approach. Music for me has to be architectural. Otherwise I just can't get with it. Bach [Goldberg's favorite composer and his specialty] is the most incredible architect in music."
Gould's Bach is as solid and beautifully designed as a Gothic cathedral. On the other hand, his approach to such a craggy modernist as Arnold Schoenberg is subtly different. "His music," says Gould, "has a very solid geometric base, so you can afford to be a little free with it. You can get very romantic with Schoenberg."
Gould then charmingly explained away his habit of humming ("my rhythm depends on it"), his contortions ("That means the piano

[There the article is cut off--RS]

yours in sissydom,

His writing's great though

IOW: the opposite of what Hurting said

search: solitude trilogy (including 'idea of north')
stokowski documentary
'The Alchemist' DVD with long scenes of Gould in the studio splicing tape, with a session taped on four microphones in different parts of the auditorium, then 'conducting' the mixdown by bringing the levels of the different mics in and out of the mix
GG Collection Vol 16 On The Twentieth Century

And really, just search 'The Glenn Gould Reader', and
Angela Hewitt's versh of the Goldbergs. Both have given me much pleasure. Do not waste your time with Gould's recordings, there's a wealth of great music out there and Gould really is a distraction from it. Listen to Wilhelm Kempff, Solomon, Artur Achnabel, Keith Jarret, Maurizio Ploiini, Michelangeli. All have something to say.
Gould, in performance, has nothing to say.
On second thought, search Leonard Bernstein's address to the audience
in a live recording (of Brahm's 1st piano concerto, I think), virtually disowning the interpretation he was about to perform with Gould.....that was brilliant

but when Gould's good, he's overpowering.

always loved this article
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/glenngould/m23-502.1-e.html