Sixty Years Ago Today, Glenn Gould Reinvented the Music Industry By Walking Off the Concert Stage and Never Looking Back

It was 60 years ago today, April 10, 1964, that one of the 20th century’s most famous and celebrated pianists performed his final concert.
To borrow from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” (himself one of the 20th century’s greatest poets), Glenn Gould gave up public performances “not with a bang but a whimper.”
That evening, the Canadian virtuoso stepped away from the keyboard at the conclusion of his concert at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles sans fanfare and sans any announcement that this was his first and last farewell performance. The 31-year-old renowned interpreter of the keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach – to date, no one else has gone further with them – had distinguished himself with a remarkable technical proficiency and a capacity to articulate the contrapuntal texture of the works of the one of the greatest composers in western history.
When I realized that this date was looming in a week filled with earthquakes and a total solar eclipse, it all made sense. I went back and listened to his debut recording on Columbia Records, recorded in 1955 and released in 1956, a performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, a work Bach published in 1741 that comprises an aria and a set of 30 variations.  It carries the name Goldberg after its first presumed performer, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg.  Unlike many variations on a theme, the Goldberg Variations do not follow the melody of the aria, but rather use its bass line and chord progression. Every third variation in the series of 30 is a canon, following an ascending pattern.
But I digress.
I sat back in my chair and took it all in.
The electrifying mastery of the playing, which was of an astonishingly high musical and technical order. Bach’s composition was a sign of profound artistic creativity as was Gould’s 1955 performance.
Perhaps ironically, Gould’s short time on earth with us was bookended by the Goldberg Variations.  Not only was this his first recording of the work but it established him as a force of nature on the keyboard. His second studio recording of the work, made in 1981, proved to be his last visit to the recording studio. It was released in September 1982, just days before his sudden and unexpected death.
Sadly, I was far too young to have been at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre on that fateful evening in 1964 but I can close my eyes and listen to the electrifying performance and imagine myself in the audience. Had I been, I would have seen him sitting on his ancient piano chair that had been built by his father, one so low he had to reach up to attack the keyboard. He probably would have slouched, and his left leg would have been crossed over his right. A man after my own heart.
Gould’s astonishing technique creates an intimate performance with the listener, despite what many presume the barriers of a studio recording might create. On that night in 1964, when he left the concert hall and never looked back, he reinvented and revolutionized the recording industry. Pianists far more senior in age and statue told him he’d be back but he had the last laugh.
Gould was at the forefront of a new era of studio recording, one that could rescue entire musical genres from oblivion. Indeed, he pointed out that recordings had been a major factor in the post-Second World War restoration of baroque music.
“This repertoire –  with its contrapuntal extravaganzas, its antiphonal balances, its espousal of instruments that chuff and wheeze and speak directly to a microphone – was made for stereo,” he wrote. Only after that pre-classical repertoire had established its popularity in records did it manage to find its way to the concert stage.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)