Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 30-32 (1956/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 55:12 minutes | 303 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Sensation yields to scandal: Gould’s feisty and headstrong treatment of the final triptych in Beethoven’s pianistic “New Testament” outraged the critics no less than his sleeve notes, in which he claimed of op. 111 that “the piece is weak in spots; it needs greater speed. Especially the first movement is such a bad piece that I wanted to get on to the finale.”
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Glenn Gould – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 16-18, Op. 31 (1973/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 57:58 minutes | 530 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

This was the last of five new recordings released in September 1973, appearing one day after the four others. It marked the end of a long and often convoluted process: the first bars of the op. 31 triptych were recorded in July 1960, the final session took place almost thirteen years later on 15 May 1973! Amazingly, none of this is evident in the sonatas themselves.
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Glenn Gould – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas No. 12, Op. 26 & No. 13, Op. 27, No. 1 (1983/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:50 minutes | 380 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Another Beethoven album. With this, Gould had turned out of a total of twenty-one of the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas—or perhaps twentytwo, for the “artist contract cards” of 1979-80 refer to a recording of the B-flat major Sonata, op. 22, that has never resurfaced. Several of the missing sonatas (the Largo from op. 7, the G-minor Sonata op. 49, no. 1, the A-major Sonata op. 101, the Hammerklavier op. 106) at least exist in the form of live CBC recordings.
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Glenn Gould – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 8-10 (1967/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:01 minutes | 389 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Amazingly, Gould’s third LP of Beethoven sonatas met with hardly any grumblings from the critics and was, all in all, warmly received. True, one reviewer spoke of “iconoclastic interpretations,” but acknowledged that it enabled listeners to discover a completely new Beethoven. Admittedly Gould’s Appassionata languished in the ice-box …
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Glenn Gould – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 8, 14 & 23 (1970/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 57:13 minutes | 531 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Yet another scandal: Gould played the F-minor Piano Sonata, op. 57, at such a tortuously slow tempo that it seemed to fall into unrelated bits. “There is about the Appassionata – an egoistic pomposity, a defiant ‘let’s just see if I can’t get away with using that once more’ attitude—that on my own private Beethoven poll places this sonata somewhere between the King Stephen Overture and the Wellington’s Victory Symphony.”
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Glenn Gould – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 5-7, Op. 10 (1965/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 42:10 minutes | 389 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

The “scandal” surrounding Beethoven’s final triptych of sonatas (see No. 2) failed to rematerialize, but Gould remained true to his unorthodox interpretative approach and brazenly violated the composer’s instructions, changing the tempo of the F-major sonata at the opening of the firstmovement recapitulation and substituting a fortissimo for a pianissimo in movement 3 of the D-major Sonata.
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Glenn Gould – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-3, Op. 2 & No. 15, Op. 28 ‘Pastorale’ (1980/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:35:59 minutes | 816 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

Among the projects that Columbia had arranged with Gould were the complete recordings of Bach’s solo keyboard works and the Beethoven sonatas. Both were to remain unfinished. Long after becoming a concert drop-out, Gould now planned to become a “record drop-out”: “My contract with CBS runs a bit beyond my 50th year. After that, there is going to be a major change of gears, much as there was twenty years ago.”
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Glenn Gould – Beethoven: Bagatelles, Op. 33 & Op. 126 (1975/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 41:41 minutes | 360 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

If the final sonatas in the Beethoven cycle dragged on for ages, the two sets of Bagatelles were turned out in a trice: the recording was completed in a mere four days. Whether there was ever a plan to record the third set, op. 119, is anybody’s guess.
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Glenn Gould – Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, Preludes & Fugues Nos. 17-24, BWV 886-893 (1971/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 33:43 minutes | 330 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Columbia Records/Sony Music

Ever in search of the ideal sound: for a while Gould apparently planned to record the Well-Tempered Clavier on a “harpsipiano” (“a neurotic piano that thinks it’s a harpsichord”), but Columbia declined. What remained is a level of polyphonic lucidity and contrapuntal rigor that beggars comparison.
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Glenn Gould – Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, Preludes & Fugues Nos. 9-16, BWV 878-885 (1970/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 34:10 minutes | 328 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Columbia Records/Sony Music

Gould had already recorded Fugue No. 9 in E major (BWV 878) and No.14 in F-sharp minor (BWV 883) in 1957 to fill up an LP with the Fifth and Sixth Partitas (see No. 4). The earlier readings were much slower: 4’17” as opposed to 1’46” for BWV 878, and 3’14” instead of 2’45” for BWV 883. You never cross the same river twice …
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Glenn Gould – Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, Preludes & Fugues Nos. 1-8, BWV 870-877 (1968/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 36:50 minutes | 356 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Columbia Records/Sony Music

Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier occupies much more space in Gould’s discography than the first. The interpretative range is all the more striking: Fugue No. 7 in E-flat major, for instance, appears in two early CBC versions lasting 3:19 (1953) and 2:03 (1966) minutes, respectively, while the one here whizzes past in one minute and thirty-eight seconds.
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Glenn Gould – Bach: Toccatas Vol. 2, BWV 911 & 914-916 (1980/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 37:33 minutes | 345 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sony Classical

In May 1979 Eaton’s Auditorium was hastily reopened for recording purposes. “Basically, it looked as if a bomb had hit the place. Walls were missing, doors were boarded up. There were no lights. There was no heat. Thick layers of dust covered everything. Luckily, the freight elevator still functioned so the piano could be brought in.” The result was the completion of the series of Bach toccatas.
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