Thread by @dean_frey

Remembering Glenn Gould on his birthday 🎂
📷 Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1981
"With a technique that knew no difficulties, Gould could dissect a work, cleanse it of its standard interpretive manners and restore to it an almost ecstatic excitement."
- Edward Rothstein

Listening to Glenn Gould's Bach English Suites album, a 2 LP set from 1977. Never noticed this before: the superb Don Hunstein portrait of Glenn on the front cover is matched by a cheeky portrayal of Johann Sebastian on the back.

Glenn Gould by Gordon Parks, 1955
He's laughing because the engineers are questioning his humming. The humming is part of the charm of his recordings.

More Glenn Gould by Gordon Parks, 1955. That's producer Howard Scott in the first shot.

A Gordon Parks portrait of Glenn Gould for the March 1956 issue of Life magazine, taken during the June 1955 recording sessions for the Goldberg Variations. Also in the studio that day: Columbia's house photographer Don Hunstein & engineer Fred Plaut, a very fine amateur.

And here's Gordon Parks taking that very same photograph of Glenn Gould. This shot is from the recording booth, by Fred Plaut
forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/histor…
Via Yale Music Library

More Glenn Gould by Fred Plaut, taken during Gould's first Goldberg Variations sessions in 1955. Half the difficulty in taking great candid portraits of artists is access, & Plaut was there from June 10-16 in Columbia's 30th St Studio, along with producer Howard Scott.

There are very few photos by Fred Plaut available on the Internet. Maybe some day they'll show up in a digital repository. In the meantime here's another Glenn Gould shot from 1955; this is well-sourced - it was used in a WSJ article.
wsj.com/articles/heari…

Taking pictures was a side-gig for Fred Plaut; what he really did was engineer great recordings for Columbia: Miles's Kind of Blue, Brubeck's Time Out, Bruno Walter, & Glenn Gould. The latter shown here in 1955.
Not bad for an amateur!

A Glenn Gould morning.

No, no, no, no. Nope.

Ah, that’s better! Glenn Gould playing Bach. With a lovely Don Hunstein portrait.

Walter Curtin
Glenn Gould at CBC Studios, Toronto
1974
"I'm fascinated with what happens to the creative output when you isolate yourself from the approval and disapproval of the people around you."

Glenn Gould by Erich Lessing, 1957
"Solitude fuels creativity, whereas brotherly camaraderie tends to dissipate it. Isolation is the one sure way to happiness."

Glenn Gould by Yousuf Karsh
Two photos from his February 21, 1957 sitting
What's happening in the second shot? Is Glenn holding up a heater to his left hand? He was always complaining about how cold his hands were.

Glenn Gould by William Auerbach-Levy
@MuseumofCityNY
"In some ways, his entire life was an experiment in esthetic isolation."
- Edward Rothstein

My favourite scene from Sylvain Chomet's 2003 film The Triplets of Belleville: Glenn Gould plays the Prelude in C minor
vimeo.com/37396411

Winthrop Sargeant on Glenn Gould, 1958
"After watching with some amusement the other night, & listening to what emerged from the piano, I concluded that Mr. Gould's manner is a perfectly sincere expression of his Gesamtpersönlichkeit."
📷 Gordon Parks, 1955

More Winthrop Sargeant on Glenn Gould, 1958
"He is obviously an original, whom one must accept on his own terms, & I would be quite happy to see him stand on his head if he felt such a posture necessary to the projection of his musical ideas."
📷 Gordon Parks, 1955

In 1965 Glenn Gould took the Muskeg Express train from Winnipeg to Churchill, on the coast of Hudson's Bay. Here he is in a great photo by Jock Carroll.
cbc.ca/radio/ideas/re…

"Those are terrible people who don't like Glenn Gould.... I will have nothing to do with such people, they are dangerous people."
- Thomas Bernhard, The Loser
Glenn Gould by Arnold Newman
New York, October 10, 1959

"Horowitz was never the mathematician that Glenn Gould was. *Was*. We say *he is*, then suddenly *he was*, this terrible *was*, I thought."
- Thomas Bernhard, The Loser
📷 Gordon Parks, 1955

John Waters on Glenn Gould: "He went beyond having sex with classical music. He *is* sex and classical music."
📷 Gordon Parks, 1955

Glenn Gould by David Levine
For Vanity Fair, 1984
"Glenn brought an extraordinary awareness and imagination - he had a very plastic mind - and he was capable of growing, of changing too."
- Leon Fleischer

Brahms from Glenn Gould, at the end of his career. There was something weightless about Glenn Gould, like he sort of hovered over the ground, & I think Don Hunstein catches that on the LP cover shot.

There was always something weightless about Glenn Gould.
📷Gordon Parks, 1955

Don Hunstein's great cover shot for Glenn Gould's Silver Jubilee album in 1980. Marshall McLuhan would have approved.

Glenn Gould bears down
Don Hunstein for Columbia, 1966

Erich Lessing
Glenn Gould & Herbert von Karajan
Berlin, 1957

One of the oddest of Glenn Gould's many oddities was his fascination with Petula Clark. Here's he is talking about her on CBC radio, from 1967. He said her voice was "fiercely loyal to its one great octave."
cbc.ca/player/play/17…

"The intriguing mixture of pedals, pins, and paradox which constitute the common piano."
- Glenn Gould's Choice: after playing every piano in Steinway's Astoria factory, he had four sent to the studio for intensive auditions
📷 Don Hunstein, 1957

"It's not without its faults, which is what I like about it."
- Glenn Gould on Steinway 174, his final choice
A great quote for any number of things
📷 Gordon Parks

Later, Glenn Gould discovered a special Steinway backstage at the Eaton Auditorium in Toronto in 1960 & thereafter used it for most of his recordings.
CD318 at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa
📷 Christophe Ledent, 2013

Bill Evans used Glenn Gould's special Steinway, CD 318, when he recorded Conversations With Myself, in 1963.

Lang Lang plays Glenn Gould's Steinway CD318 at the National Arts Centre, 2012

Remembering Glenn Gould on his birthday 🎂
The famous one-shoe photograph by Don Hunstein, 1980
According to Hunstein, "Gould enjoyed being photographed and the shoots were always spontaneous."

My favourite Canadian film is François Girard's Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, from 1993. Colm Feore is superb as Glenn. My favourite scene - or film, I guess - is Truck Stop.

Leonard Bernstein, Glenn Gould & Igor Stravinsky on the CBS program "The Creative Performer".
📷 Paul Popper, 1960
When Gods walked the earth.

Leonard Bernstein tells a great Glenn Gould story: Felicia takes Glenn in hand.
leonardbernstein.com/cond_gould.htm

Glenn Gould is adored for his eccentricities as much as for his piano playing. Gotta keep your hands warm drinking wine
📷 Erich Auerbach, 1959

Got a free five hours today? Hear how the sausage is made: Glenn Gould records the Ballades of Brahms, 1982
Sadly, these are the great pianist's final recordings.

I could do this all day, but I think it's time to end this Glenn Gould birthday thread 🎂🎹🧵
Here's one last picture, by Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life, from 1981, taken in Toronto at the same time as the photo at the top of this thread.
Stay weird, Glenn!

A bonus photo for my Glenn Gould Birthday thread 🎂🧵
📷 John Mahler for the Toronto Star
September 1, 1978
@torontolibrary digital archive
He's on location at Old Fort York during the filming of "Glenn Gould's Toronto", a marvellous TV program

One more!
Glenn Gould's suitcase, cap, scarf & gloves, along with his favourite piano chair, in Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto. These were purchased from Gould's family by Library & Archives Canada.
📷 David Cooper, November 18, 1983
@torontolibrary digital archive