Glenn Gould plays Bach

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Glenn Gould plays Bach
5,571,412 views•Sep 23, 2006

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vagifabilov
2.7K subscribers
Extracts from "The art of Piano" documentary show Glenn Gould playing J.S.Bach's Partita #2
2,880 Comments
Auggie Giuseppe
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lrizzardo
lrizzardo
4 years ago
The dog probably hasn't eaten in days

1.2K


Edward Darkene
Edward Darkene
4 years ago
Old, but Gould !

1.9K


PointyTailofSatan
PointyTailofSatan
8 years ago
When I was a struggling student in the 70's, I was lucky enough to neet and have a couple of 2AM "dinners" with Glenn Gould at Fran's diner on St. Clair. At the time, I hated classical music! I didn't even know really who Glenn was. Out of pity I guess, he took me to his apartment one night and played Bach for me, explaining the concepts of counterpoint.When I left later, I felt like Moses coming down from the mountain. I've visited his grave now so many times I have lost count.

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Lucius Vorenus
Lucius Vorenus
4 years ago
He was completely crazy but a genius. These things come together frequently.

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STORM Russian Combat System
STORM Russian Combat System
2 years ago
He stops playing, stands up, goes to the window, then back to the piano and he never misses the beat, like if he had a metronome built in him.

867


addi wei
addi wei
3 years ago
I'll take Gould's singing over Lang Lang's goofy facial expressions any day.

767


Alex May
Alex May
4 years ago
It's funny how Glenn basically ruined any other Bach interpretations for me. It's just so fantastically furious and delicate at the same time. Really brings out those beautiful harmonies.

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Herfinnur Árnafjall
Herfinnur Árnafjall
6 months ago
Am I'm the only one impressed by how good his voice is?

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Special Agent Dale Cooper
Special Agent Dale Cooper
1 year ago
The House That Jack Built

2K


colourfulwithaU
colourfulwithaU
8 years ago
"Glenn Gould plays Bach".

Yes. Yes, he does.

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SR71YF12
SR71YF12
6 years ago
Some comments here are just so narrow-minded. Always the same old arguments: "he hums/acts/moves too much while playing", bla bla bla. His eccentricities aside, it is a well-documented fact that Glenn Gould had a photographic memory and perfect pitch. His astounding ability to keep vast amounts of music in his mind has been attested to by numerous friends, colleagues and critics. To quote András Schiff: "he could control five voices more intelligently than most pianists can control two". His Russian contemporaries recognized this too, see the documentary The Russian Journey, about Goulds concerts in Russia in 1957.

Gould was anything but bland in his playing, and he was also extremely articulate and thoughtful in his conversations and writings. I cannot help but think that in terms of sheer power of intellect, he was similar to the great mathematician John von Neumann, of whom the physicist and Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe said: "I have sometimes wondered whether a brain like von Neumann's does not indicate a species superior to that of man". The Russians would no doubt have agreed with me, they thought that Gould came from another planet.

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Phillip Brandel
Phillip Brandel
6 months ago
We need an album of isolated Glenn Gould vocals

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Philip30
Philip30
4 years ago
The sweet flavor of the madness

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ashley chavez
ashley chavez
6 years ago
lol when he randomly stands up and gets back on the piano

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doGreatartistsgrowontrees?
doGreatartistsgrowontrees?
3 years ago
Who knew that JS Bach wrote his 2nd Partita for voice (with piano accompaniment).

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DragonRebelRose
DragonRebelRose
3 years ago
1:36 "Nah"
hahaha! I love his performance!

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Papa_mia
Papa_mia
4 years ago
The only case where the mistaken between "this piece" and "this song" is acceptable.

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OrthoËpic
OrthoËpic
11 months ago
He is the greatest pianist ever. His dog must be the second greatest pianist ever.

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Hans
Hans
1 year ago
Oh Jack, the material

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Debra Browne
Debra Browne
5 years ago
This may be the most fascinating video I have ever watched.

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kainoamh
kainoamh
7 months ago (edited)
I imagine this being some insane man's hallucination as in reality, he twiddles his fingers in a wheelchair and hums loudly in a mental asylum

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Narciso
Narciso
1 month ago
He is so immersed into that piano, he stares at it as if he was looking inside beyond the keys, I spent  the entire video looking at his face rather than his hands.

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Mythagoras
Mythagoras
1 year ago
His flawless playing combined with his perfect choice of piano gives this short recording a quality that has stood the test of time, however bad the quality of the actual audio, compared to today’s standards

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DannyBando
DannyBando
3 years ago
It's absolutely insane how Glenn Gould plays. He plays these virtuosic pieces which other pianists practice hours a day for years to get the right technique and the right way to bring out the voicing and the sound, yet none of them hold a candle to the Bach interpretations of Gould. He effortlessly glides along the piano humming along while he plays these virtuosic pieces sitting extremely low on the piano, yet he never makes a mistake. I try so hard to find one small flaw, one little error in the voicing of a chord, or the quality of sound or phrasing of a certain passage yet I can't find any. With other top tier concert pianists like Evgeny Kissin and Lang Lang of today I can still definitely find a few errors in that the tempo is a bit too fast, or one of the chords is too harsh, but Gould's interpretations are literally flawless. Lang Lang and Kissin I will say are romantic era technical and musical geniuses for sure, and the older pianists like Horowitz and Rubinstein are musical geniuses; yet they all still make some mistakes; I am not saying that Gould is perfect since he doesn't really play romantic era pieces which are considerably more difficult than most Bach pieces, but as Rubinstein once said, to play Bach like Gould would take a lifetime of training. Gould literally devoted himself to Bach and his interpretations are the closest to the way that God would've interpreted them himself. He played along to the music, not to technique, and it's too bad that he died of drug overdose. That might have been what caused him to focus so hard and play so perfectly, but anyway...

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MrMonomonster
MrMonomonster
6 years ago
I said it once and I'll say it again - this short video captures one of the greatest moments in music history.

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Alix Edmiston
Alix Edmiston
4 years ago
This is actually from a  Canadian 1958 National Film Board documentary on Glenn called Off The Record.   Here is the link  https://www.nfb.ca/film/glenn_gould_off_record  There is a second part of the documentary called Off the Record.   He is playing at his cottage in Uptergrove near Orillia.

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Zofia Kosiorek
Zofia Kosiorek
1 day ago
I can't say if his chair is too low or too high
hELP



ravenstag
ravenstag
4 years ago
Dear World.
I love it and I love this man.
Sincerely,
Me.

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Ernest Martin
Ernest Martin
5 years ago
Only glenn could walk away like a boss and continue playing like nobody's business

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Magorov the Great
Magorov the Great
1 year ago
"That is a fine house you have built, Jack"...

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