glen gould

This is our favorite pianist. His name is Glen Gould. We first came across him when we were trying to expand our musical horizons in 1983. We had a fondness for the piano because we used to have to listen to our brother while he practiced. Didn't think it was 'music' then, but do now.
Some history:
Glenn Herbert Gould (September 25, 1932 – October 4, 1982) was a Canadian pianist, noted especially for his recordings of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He gave up concert performances in 1964, dedicating himself to the recording studio for the rest of his career, and performances for television and radio.
Check it out. This is punk.

Gould was known for his vivid musical imagination, and listeners regarded his interpretations as ranging from brilliantly creative to, on occasion, outright eccentric. He often swayed his torso, always in a clockwise motion (this circular motion is associated with left-handedness), as he played. He did this in music of medium to very slow tempo. In 1949 Gould injured his tailbone on a paved boatlaunch near his Ontario home. This incident appears to be associated with injury to Gould's back that affected his playing posture. But it is not clear whether this occasioned the need for the chair that Gould's father subsequently modified with screws to adjust its height, and which Gould sat in to play for the rest of his life.

His piano playing had great clarity, particularly in contrapuntal passages. Gould disliked and rebelled against what he believed to be a hedonistic approach to music which had become popular in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gould was rarely virtuosic for the sake of being virtuosic, but rather, often had a refreshingly thoughtful and withdrawn interpretation of the music he played.

Perhaps because he was left-handed, Gould had a formidable technique that enabled him to choose very fast tempos while retaining the separateness and clarity of each note. He took an extremely low position at the instrument, which allowed him more control over the keyboard. Charles Rosen's view is that a low position at the piano is unsuitable for playing the technically demanding music of the 19th century. However, this did not seem to impede Gould, as he showed considerable technical skill in both his recordings of Bach, and in virtuosic and romantic works like his own arrangement of Ravel's La Valse and his playing of Liszt's transcriptions of Beethoven's 5th and 6th symphonies. Gould worked from a young age with his teacher Alberto Guerrero on a technique known as finger-tapping, a method of training the fingers to act more independently from the arm.

Gould practiced little on the piano, preferring to study music by reading it rather than playing it, a technique he had also learnt from Guerrero. He stated that he didn't understand the requirement of other pianists to continuously reinforce their relationship with the instrument by practicing many hours a day. It seems that Gould was able to practice mentally without access to an instrument, and even took this so far as to prepare for a recording of Brahms piano works without ever playing them until a few weeks before the recording sessions. This is all the more staggering considering the absolute accuracy and phenomenal dexterity exhibited in his playing.

Regarding the performance of Bach on the piano, Gould said, "the piano is not an instrument for which I have any great love as such... [But] I have played it all my life and it is the best vehicle I have to express my ideas." In the case of Bach, Gould admitted, "[I] fixed the action in some of the instruments I play on—and the piano I use for all recordings is now so fixed—so that it is a shallower and more responsive action than the standard. It tends to have a mechanism which is rather like an automobile without power steering: you are in control and not it; it doesn't drive you, you drive it. This is the secret of doing Bach on the piano at all. You must have that immediacy of response, that control over fine definitions of things."

And, here he is playing Bach's Goldberg Variations (just the first few). If you listen closely, you'll soon realize that he's playing a variation of a simple theme. It's the same song played more than thirty times, each as amazing as the other. This is just the first nine ...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, he hums as he plays. Don't be scared.