Top Highlights

• Gould’s distinctive piano style, idiosyncratic interpretations, unusual stage mannerisms and independent vision marked him as a maverick and an eccentric.
• He favoured structurally intricate music over the early-Romantic and Impressionistic works at the core of the standard piano repertoire, preferring Elizabethan, Baroque, Classical, late-Romantic and early-twentieth-century music. He was most renowned for his interpretations of the keyboard music of J.S. Bach.
• An intellectual performer with a gift for clarifying counterpoint and structure, his playing was also deeply expressive and rhythmically dynamic. He had the technique and tonal palette of a virtuoso, but refuted many conventions and disdained live performance.
• A significant milestone in Gould’s musical education was his tutelage under the Chilean pianist Alberto Guerrero at the TCM (1943–52). Guerrero ingrained in Gould the repertoire and finger technique for which he became celebrated.
• He also composed music avidly from early childhood.

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