The most popular Glenn Gould performances on YouTube have drawn millions of views.
Gould stopped performing live in 1964, retreating to the recording studio and the television camera, but his filmed performances have found an enormous new audience online.
Glenn Gould at the piano
His idiosyncratic Beethoven and Bach, and the running commentary he delivered from the piano bench continue to fascinate and divide listeners even today.
Below are the Glenn Gould performances that today’s YouTube viewers return to most, with the most popular at the end.
“I asked 6 pianists what they think of Glenn Gould”
1.3 million views
In this video, pianist and content creator Ben Laude, working for the online platform Tonebase, asked six great pianists to share their opinions about Glenn Gould.
What follows is a wealth of opinions. Leon Fleisher marvels at Gould’s unconventional flat-fingered technique. Anne-Marie McDermott shares how his Bach exemplifies, for her, a pianist’s admirable refusal to impose himself on the music. Seymour Bernstein says flatly that he didn’t like Gould’s playing.
This video grants priceless insight into how Gould was so controversial – and why.
Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Sonata No. 17
1.4 million views
This performance was originally broadcast on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in 1967 on the television program Music for a Sunday Afternoon.
What makes it unique is Gould’s philosophical introduction. Paradoxically, he is both awkward – speaking with a clipped, theatrical delivery – and completely convinced of his own ideas.
His famously idiosyncratic thought process is on full display in this quote:
“Within every creative person, there is an inventor at odds with a museum curator… But the thing about Beethoven is that in his case, the struggle between the inventor and the curator isn’t tucked away out of sight like the proverbial skeleton in the family closet; it is the very surface of the music, and Beethoven lets us see it happening as though he had no skeleton to hide.”
Once Gould begins playing, the playing feels by turns improvisatory and rigorously rhythmic – perhaps representing the twin impulses of creator and curator that he described.
Ludwig van Beethoven – Piano Concerto No. 5
1.9 – 2 million views apiece
This performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, uploaded by the official Glenn Gould archive, is in two parts: one with the first movement, and another with the second and third movements.
This performance with conductor Karel Ančerl and the Toronto Symphony dates from 1970, in celebration of Beethoven’s 200th birthday.
Gould wasn’t originally scheduled to give this performance. On a Thursday night, Italian soloist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli became indisposed. Concert organisers phoned Gould to see if he could fill in, even though he hadn’t played the concerto in four years. Gould said yes and rehearsed on Friday. Ančerl joked that they’d “substituted one kook for another.”
The resulting performance was filmed. It was Gould’s second recorded account of the concerto, after a 1966 version with Leopold Stokowski and the American Symphony Orchestra – the last time he’d played it before this performance.
Johann Sebastian Bach – Aria from the Goldberg Variations
2.7 million views
Despite the popularity of these Beethoven performances, Gould remains most famous for his Bach.
His international recording debut was Bach’s Goldberg Variations, recorded in 1955, a few months before he turned 23.
This record led to touring opportunities in Europe and helped to jump-start his career.
In 1981, he re-recorded the Goldberg Variations. This second recording is often characterised as more reserved and introverted than the first.
This filmed performance dates from that same year, providing visuals to match the famous recording.
Twenty-six years separate the two recordings, and Gould would die the year after the second. Listening to both is a rare chance to hear one interpreter reckon with the same music across a whole career.
Johann Sebastian Bach – Keyboard Concerto No. 1
4.3 million views
Glenn Gould had a fascinating relationship with conductor Leonard Bernstein. Both were major stars of the classical music world in the 1960s.
Bernstein admired Gould and called him gutsy, but occasionally they disagreed while collaborating. In April 1962, they gave a legendary performance of Brahms‘s first piano concerto together with the New York Philharmonic. Gould insisted on such a slow tempo that Bernstein addressed the audience beforehand, disclaiming responsibility for the tempo while saying he respected Gould too much not to conduct it.
Leonard Bernstein
While programming one of his famous televised educational concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein invited Gould to play a movement from Bach’s first keyboard concerto (BWV 1052).
The result is both mysterious and methodical – and the respect between the two stars is palpable.
Johann Sebastian Bach – The Art of Fugue
4.4 million views
It is fitting that the most popular Glenn Gould performance on YouTube is of Bach’s massive, late unfinished work, The Art of Fugue.
The instrumentation for the work was never specified, but here Gould plays it on piano, albeit with the percussive precision of a harpsichordist.
By 1980, Gould was at the end of his performing career. At this stage in his life, he preferred recording studios to public performances.
Gould teamed up with famed documentarian Bruno Monsaingeon to make this film. The timing proved poignant; Gould died in 1982 after a stroke. He was only fifty years old.
Conclusion
What links these performances is the quality that made Gould controversial in his own lifetime: he never played anything the expected way.
More than forty years after his death, these videos let a new generation of listeners meet Gould on the terms he set for himself – at the keyboard, unrepentant, and entirely himself.
Which of these performances is your favourite?
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