Added: 4 years ago
From: jormundgard
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  • This guy is in the zone hardcore. He's in a total musical trance.

  • Where can I find some of his own compositions?

  • its magical

  • How wonderful!

  • Gould was an amazing performer Bach was a genius

  • @pauljonesesquire Gould was a genius of interpretation there is such a thing you know, oh sorry you don't !

  • I like his humming, he claimed he did that because the piano sometimes was enough to express his musicality!

  • he was a gift to those of us to enjoy of the precious moments he gave us, we should be grateful for this event in history that we were and are a witness to.

  • I believe Mr. Gould WAS an amazing pianist...nevertheless, in my humble opinion, some of his eccentricity was a thinly-veiled contrivance...Zen master? nah.

  • If people would care about anything as much as this man cared about the perfection and beauty that is music we would have a much better world. as long as the thinsg they cared about were good. lol

  • Now that I've heard David Fray playing Bach's concertos I feel like these are excentricities on Gould's playing ("No, joking ?"), for exemple on these few notes played "staccatissimo". But what Gould did on this music stays highly inspirational anyhow, no wonderings about that.

  • I love this piece more than everything.

  • regrettably this is not what I had in mind when writing this piece sorry johann seb bach leipzig

  • He seems rather autistic...

  • why does he keep his mouth moving???

  • @do7no7 He is singing the lead voice. :)

  • @do7no7 he´s retarted...

  • @TubeSpoker he's not retarded, just high on music :)

  • I wonder if he was acting like that when he was NOT in front of an audience. Very overestimated pianist. I'm fed up with all this adoration for the "mad genius". He is just annoying. Not to mention this autistic humming...

  • @2persimmon1

    'I wonder if he was acting like that when he was NOT in front of an audience'..

    You're showing of your ignorance again? lol

  • @quinto34

    Again? When was the last time?

  • @2persimmon1 ...no again. you are an idiot from start,simple and point

  • @2persimmon1 A big reason for his quitting concerts so early was because (whether he admit it or not) he was highly self-conscious of his oddness and knew audiences often just came to watch his behaviour instead of the music. I understand why you'd find him annoying, but it's pretty clear he couldn't help it.

  • @2persimmon1 Then why are you here?

  • @2persimmon1 Seriously, when anyone makes music like this why do you care about the person's problems? It was up to him to care about them enough to change them, they were his own issues. But clearly he didn't bother because they weren't his main concern. By looking at this video can you not see that (for whatever reason, probably a self-induced mental restructuring) there's a single-pointed concentration that I can only compare to Zen masters. Surely that in itself constitutes genius.

  • @Musicman180 YES!

  • @Musicman180

    The main problem I have with Gould is that I can't stand his playing. His humming is just an extra I can't bare and it wouldn't be an issue for me if I liked his playing. I wouldn't care even if he was jumping on the piano during performance. However (and this is the reason why I'm here) when he was talking about music interpretation, he was very interesting. Sadly, it's his playing that I find awful. A matter of taste.

  • @2persimmon1 I think the same, but i like his interpretation, but hate the humming... just takes me out of the song to gould stupid interventions.

  • @2persimmon1 What kind of playing do you prefer? I'm sure Gould himself would deny that this is a perfect rendition. He is just playing in a way that allows others to view Bach in a different light, a way to see a neglected part of Bach's genius. His staccato playing helps people more accustomed to the romantic style playing to hear Bach's counterpoint for what it is. It isn't necessary the most ideal approach but it is certainly didactic.

  • @NimbleTurtle13

    Well, for some reason that I cannot explain, I find Bach's music ideal for "adventurous" playing. I mean an interpretation ranging from Gould's staccato to even extremely "romantic" feeling often in the same piece. While his playing is very clean, I believe it's too much. Harpsichord's lack of dynamics is misleading, making many people to believe that harpsichord music should be played in an autistic manner. Just look to other Bach's works how emotionally rich they are.

  • @2persimmon1 Well the reason Glenn usually play on a piano is because of its potential to create dynamics. But in his own words, it's important not to abuse it, otherwise the structure of Bach's music will fail. Neither the piano or harpsichord are sufficient instruments to demonstrate Bach's genius. His concept of sound was well beyond the instruments, unlike composers such as Chopin or Scarlatti. I like Gould because he works within "the parameter of which the music observes".

  • @2persimmon1 Interesting terminology 'autistic manner'. I always thought of Bach as more of a musical savant than a romantic, probably that's why I like Gould's take on his music above all others.

  • @Musicman180 It seems you have sussed this great musicians modus operandi well I think so any way, buit remember these idiots that in the face of this genius concentrate on personal quirks, are beyond hope! like those that comment on a great musicians looks they are in their own purgatory and i could not care less about them !

  • @2persimmon1 Glenn Gould overestimated?...yeah...well..­.I wonder if you are so troll when no one reads the things that you write...

  • @Miquelangeld :

    So, from your point of view someone who dislikes Gould is a troll. Ok, then I'm a troll.

    In the same way of thinking, since no one reads the things I write and you read them, then you are no one.

    Interesting. Keep up!

  • @2persimmon1 You're a troll not because you dislikes Glenn Gould, you're a troll because the way you express your opinion...

  • Bach Jazz Goul Gold Jarret

  • L'astrophysicien Trinh Xuan Thuan s'interroge sur la question de l'intentionnalité du monde, Glenn GOULD est peut-être une réponse !

  • D I V I N !!!!

  • i bet bachs style was nothing like this

  • great, GREAT !

    Merci from France...

  • This is an exceptional performance. I do find the octave displacements in the repeat to be off-putting, however.

  • Mis respetos para Glenn,creo que el supo lo que era tocar Bach,no es fácil pero con esfuerzo se lo logra

  • Je sais comment certains aime ceci.

  • the sang is the perfect background!

  • Brilliant!!!!!!

  • @ThePVGS1 i am sorry, i have mistaken button...

  • I know the Joy you must have experienced on the Roof Top. I lived upstairs of his Parents home when he was a Teen, He is and always was brilliant, kind, excentric yes, but could he put life into music.

  • Who says reincarnation doesn't exist? Bach came back as Glenn Gould because he never knew his celebrity status while alive; Felix Mendlessohn, was responsible for bringing Bach's works to the world

  • So inspiring, it's all about the love he put into it, and that's why he is remembered so dearly!

  • Glenn Gould sings better than justin bieber

  • @benjamincrouzier sure he did! lol

  • That's funny, caddencadden, someone, who's hiding behind a phony computer name, calling a very gifted man "a weirdo".

  • Unique. Now I can finally notice the difference between Gould and Tureck. But why record those off-putting sounds coming out Gould's mouth? It is certainly not singing to me and spoils the performance. Does his 1981 cycle on CD include these sounds? If so, I would rather Tureck's performances on CD.

  • what a weirdo

  • @caddencadden is it wrong to be a weirdo?.... bah...il ajoute sa touche c tout; on aime ou on aime pas. zut.that's all.

  • @lucantonin type in google define: weirdo - it is wrong to be a weirdo yes. it is also weird to have half of your reply in english and the other half in frog language.

  • As great as GG is I can only imagine how Bach himself would have played this piece. Every interpretation is different and I think Bach would have been impressed by GG.

  • is the sound coming out of his mouth?

  • @ibzkoty

    yes he's singing

  • Quelle lecture !

  • Awesome playing.TY j for posting.

  • Il nous amène au rêve, que dire de plus, quelle idée de nous avoir laissé orphelin !

  • HE Realy looks like a monkey but he is REALY GOOD

  • One of the greatest moments in history of piano playing(Quite Dramatic statement, I know)

  • Why cant i watch this on my ipaf

  • That's as close to kissing the face of God as we can ever get.

  • Glenn Gould se laissait la liberté de changer sa manière d'interpréter Bach, d'une fois à l'autre.Parfois lyrique (il aurait dit que parfois il aimait jouer comme-à la manière de- Edwin Fischer

    en fait , de Glenn Gould..

  • do it again!

  • There's no doubt that he was odd and any teacher would have forty fits about the way he sits a the piano and the vocal accompaniment. But the tone he gets from piano is superb, equalled maybe - maybe - but in a millennium not exceeded. Not only can we delight in his performance but enjoy his total dedication to the music.

  • 2:35 We may just hear the piano, but in Glenn's mind there is an all orchestra

  • A brain in every finger.

  • Glenn Gould is the Bruce Lee of the piano.

  • @BigBiff88 well said

  • @BigBiff88 i just wanna hug you because you didn't say chuck norris.

  • hi !! i just wanna know if he have always interpreted J.S. Bach ? thank and sorry im french

  • @kenzafarah45 No, Glenn Gould also played Beethoven and other great classical composers but, his interpretations of Bach was his clear claim to fame. What mystifies me is why he didn't compose great music himself. You should check out Glenn Gould on his best-selling LP from the 50s Bach: The Goldberg Variations

  • @TheEnormousPianist Glenn did compose some music. He wanted to devote himself to composition, and had he lived past 50, he probably would have composed more music.

  • he is speaking with his piano

  • What a..... weird man.

  • pls someone tell him this is not an opera

  • Waht a profound intimate understanding of Bach's aesthetic - universal beyond the time, the genre, the instrument - Glen Gould - like Bach - a gift to all of humanity

  • Olá Glenn! Aqui estou de volta. Sempre bom revê-lo. Pessoas como você são para sempre. A conjugação verbal é o tempo presente. Fica a memória saudosa e amena. E sempre um contentamento por suas belezas de apresentaçôes. Deixo meus abraços. Até mais ver.

  • If I was on a desert island I would never be alone if I had Gould playing Bach.

  • so tender

  • I think this is the Aria and not the sarabande !

  • I wish for a moment, I could have this brilliance, the mind and the mastery of the keyboard.............. just for a moment my life would be complete. there are wishes in life, this is my wish.

  • your face look as richard clayderman. And Richard Clayderman copied the style of Gould in the Expression face

  • @C0L050

    Clayderman est un arriviste. Comme Jean Michel JARRE.

  • @interval999 I ONLY SAID: CLAYDERMAN COPIED HAT STYLE IN HER face !

  • haunting delicacy. a frequent one on my list.

  • I Love that pianist

  • sublime

    era un autorità su bach e lo sarà per sempre

  • I live a block away from where Glenn Gould lived most of his adult life until his passing in 1982. He was a wizard and a true star, very eccentric as well. There's a story from a neighbour in his apartment building who said she would go up on the roof during summer evenings and listen to him play from his apartment. What a story.

  • @58Wheels Such a privlage we should all have

  • @58Wheels What a lucky neighbour!!

  • @58Wheels Wow what a treat that must have been. I suppose Gould was never really alone in that way.

  • @58Wheels I don't blame her, to be honest, I would definately go on that roof even in winter. Can you imagine listening to GG almost everyday and for free? That was surely a privilege! What a happy woman.

  • @58Wheels Lucky neighbour!!!!

  • @58Wheels Can you imagine a free concert by Glenn Gould while on the roof top. I can imagine listening with a fine wine and the stars. What a privlage. I wish It could have been me.

  • @58Wheels You're so lucky ;)

  • I live a block away from where Glenn Gould lived most of his adult life until his passing in 1982. He was a wizard and a true star, very eccentric as well. There's a story from a neighbour in his apartment building who said she would go up on the roof during summer evenings and listen to him play from his apartment. What a story.

  • notes are notes, what does it matter what instrument they are played on. I think Glen would have a better idea on how to make Bach sound then any of you armchair critics who couldnt play a Bach composition if you had 20 years to practice it. Does it sound good, thats really all that matters.

  • Grande Glenn Gould. Inesquecível. Sempre com seu talento e seu característico toque criativo e impecável interpretação. Saudoso Gould. Abs.

  • Dear God, nobody plays J.S. Bach's piano works like G.G. R.I.P., great-one!

  • How can i missed this and discovered Bach at 16.... shane on me

    Sry for my english, i'm french

  • Playing bach on a piano is about as laughable as playing Sibelius on a harpsichord,very little do do with what the Composer intended or was saying musically!!!!!!Modern pitch,equal temperament UGH!

  • @Imhof44 I think every good composition resambles singing, talking, breathing and a sound of eternity (?), I would say it doesn´t appear in composers head like a "sound od harpsichord". I don´t think Bach would be dissapointed by piano. :-) ´

    Could he say to a singer : "Please, would you sing it like a harpsichord?" :-)))

  • So this glen guy was pretty damn good but what was up with him having to hum everything "as he heard it in his head." ??

  • Glenn make little joke. See, Glenn not really like this song at all:)

  • Enchanting, so deep

  • Horrible!!!

  • Was he using metronome; and what tempo (name)? Or Tempi (names).......if you answer, you're just genius to the Lord !!!

  • Was he using metronome; and what tempo (name)? Or Tempi (names).......

  • Was he using metronome; and what tempo (name)?

  • Weirdo

  • ja , ich mag Goulds Bach Interpretationen. Ja er spielt Bach toll und war ein großer Pianist. Aber die Tatsache daß er ein bisschen seinen Verstand verloren hat und auf jeder Aufnahme sein doofes Gesinge zu hören ist , macht ihn für mich NICHT zum größten Bach Interpreten aller Zeiten.

  • fantástico.

    divino Glenn.

    sempre conosco

  • fantástico.

    

  • RIP Glenn Gould 1982 good bye Master of Variations

  • After hearing an excruciatingly boring rendition of Beethoven's Emperor, i needed to hear Gould playing what he REALLY love, Bach.

  • ME ENCANTAN SUS EXPRESIONES, SE NOTA QUE GOZA LA MUSICA QUE SUS DEDOS TOCAN!!

  • Que grande eres Gould!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • @lapispinoza I'm french ^^

  • He is unique... play the piano and humming ..

  • I fall in love with this Man

  • He's great....but did he ever sing "My Way" ?

  • The singing is really distracting in this one, even by Gould standards! All the same, such happy, infectious playing.

  • GENIAL++++++++++++

  • You should play it the way you would sing it.

  • Glenn Gould playing and acting Glenn Gould --not Bach

  • @francisjdunne - you are wrong. Bach would have rejoiced in the way Glenn celebrated these musical gifts. Don't think with any certainty that Bach always played his compositions exactly the same way- even twice. He had a great sense of variation and certainly did not take himself as seriously as most want to be pedants do.

  • @francisjdunne At last! a sane comment. We learn much more about Gould, than we do about Bach when we watch him perform. Gould's true genius lay in perpetuating the cult of personality that surrounded him, and the the comments on here seem to support this idea. God! Genius! Incomparable! He was a man who played the piano very well, and there are also may others who do so. People seem lost in the vanity of their idolatry.

  • @GuitarOfTruth

    I have loved Bach since I was a child and discovered Gould much later. Cult of personality? Maybe. I prefer to think of Bach and Gould as the perfect marriage of composer and interpreter. Piano is a performance art, and I simply enjoy Gould's performances more than other pianists'. He was a great pianist, recording artist, broadcaster, and thinker, and this is why you see such devotion here. 

  • @BrigitC1 Perhaps. It does seem like a lot hyperbole to me. I enjoy some of his performances too, but don't really think in terms of perfect marriages etc. If a performance is perfect, then it is also finished. Where next? And was not aware he was a thinker, also! What did he think?? Maybe I am jealous as I don't understand the need to be devout about it. Someone mentions here that he is a wizard. An illusionist, maybe. ( ;

  • @BrigitC1

    Perfect? I didn't mean to suggest that, although he certainly was a wizard (on the keyboard) and also a bit of an aburdist. His thoughts are sadly beyond my ken, but his ideas about music, animals, the electronic age, and other subjects are well documented. Check out The Genius Within -- you just may become a devotee.

  • Interprète incomparable! 

  • Such an uplifting performance! One of the many!

  • GLENN GOULD "JOUANT" AVEC SON PIANO .......ET IL VIT CE QU'IL JOUE . IL CARESSE LES TOUCHES COMME ON CARESSERAIT UNE FEMME AVEC UN AMOUR ABSOLU !!!!

  • Mi son said the other day: "We may not believe in God but we must believe in Bach"

  • @Garramedia believe in Bach it´s believe in God.

  • @kandutery

    Believe in Rimsky-Korsakov, it's believe in FSM.

  • @Garramedia

    Your son is cool.

  • @Garramedia Joseph Brodsky said:"In every music there's Bach, in every one of us there's God."

  • @Garramedia and Cioran say : If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is God.

  • Glenn Gould est l'un des personnages les plus importants du XXeme siècle. Quand il joue, chaque note semble libre, à la fois détaché des autres notes, mais influençant la structure globale de la pièce. La plupart des musiciens se contente de jouer une pièce, et c'est à vous de ressentir quelque chose. Alors que chez Gould, la musique semble ouverte, comme si on pouvait entrer à l'intérieur, et ressentir des choses insoupçonnables.

  • Glenn tu es peut-être le plus grand interprète du miracle jean sebastien bach. Intelligence, sensibilité, aucune concession à la facilité, à des effets superflus.

    Elixir de l'âme en besoin de sens de vie, bach touche le fond du cerveau. GOULD le sait, et a tendu tout son être pour l'interpréter. Quelle intelligence. Ceux qui un jour ont été tout d'un coup 'accaparé', 'saisis' dans leur sensibilité par la force et la beauté de ces interprétations ne l'oublient pas. Tout le reste est barratin.

  • un Glenn Gould d'une aisance !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Va mas alla de lo creible.

    La interpretacion se funde con el mismo Bach.

    ¡Perfeccion!.

  • BEAUTIFUL SPLENDID

  • He is speaking to Bach at 1:11.

  • better than bach himself

  • Tout commentaire est superflu..... ça c'est de l'interprétation!

  • Un peut plus et il atterrit sous le piano ^

  • Goulds humming is in-tune. when he bursts with enthusiasm in a polyphonic passage he sometimes struggles to sing all the voices at once, i think.

  • Is it just me, or is he humming completely out of key? Not that I'm complaining, it wouldn't be Glenn Gould without the humming.

  • Directing his right hand as a conductor with the left hand and hunning as he plays. This is Glenn Gould,

    So good. Nothing else to say.

  • On s'en fout vraiment de savoir si Gould ceci ou Gould celà... Son interprétation semble tout droit issue du cerveau de Bach lui-même. Tout chante. Merci. bravo.

  • .... poor Bach ! ...

    a musical nonsense !

  • @60MrAT ?

  • Muchas veces parece que cuando hablan sobre las versiones de Gould sobre Bach solamente se fijan en las notas y nada mas.Las interpretaciones de Gould siempre son unicas con un sonido tan limpio,claro,no romanticista,con unas ornamentaciones unicas al igual que la manera en la que articula cada nota o las respiraciones que a veces dejaba separando una idea de otra,que solamente duraban un silencio de corchea y a la vez una eternidad.Ademas de su canturreo puramente musical. Simplemente un GENIO.

  • The funny thing is that he is singing harmony. Its like he is adding another voice to the composition. So in a way, when he was playing bach, he was adding to it.

  • 0:43

    He don't hum, he really sing;

  • Bach came up with some crazy melodic lines back in those days.

  • WONDERFUL!!!!!!!

  • WTF ? Is this grandpa mental or something ?

  • @totalannihilator99

    Mental? He's one of the most supremely gifted musical geniuses of the 20th century!

  • @totalannihilator99 Gould likely had a mild form of autism, but was able to function in normal society. He simply had a different interpretation of Bach than most other pianists. Also, I've tried humming along the themes to Bach keyboard pieces as I play them like Gould and I find not only that I can concentrate better, I also maintain a steadier tempo and its more relaxing.