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The Best Glenn Gould Interview -- Period

Professor X | Chicago, IL | 07/12/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"$19 is a pretty stiff price for 60 minutes of talk, but if you love Glenn Gould, this interview is well worth it. I own the original LP, which I purchased for 99 cents at the local Salvation Army. I'm thrilled to see it on CD so that others can experience this amazing interview.



Conducted only four years out from Gould's "retirement" from the concert stage, this is the freshest, least "scripted" Gould interview I've ever heard. (Yes, in later years, Gould actually scripted his interviews -- both the questions & the answers!)



As the title suggests, much of the interview focuses on Gould's decision to "dropout" of the concert world & to devote his energies to recording. At one point in the interview, Gould, at the piano, demonstrates how his playing was corrupted by the demands of the concert performance and the "accrued bad habits" he picked up that "destroyed the fabric of the music."



One gets the feeling in this interview that Gould is being confronted with genuinely thought-provoking questions from the superb John McClure, and Gould's responses are suffused with his typically joyous, iconoclastic, elegant & impish intelligence and humanity.



If you're a fellow Gouldian & you can afford the $19, pick this up before it goes out-of-print, like so much of Gould's treasures inevitably do. If you can't afford the $19 & you're ever in Chicago, swing on by & I'll throw it on the old turntable for you. We'll sit on creaky chairs & hum along."