Glenn Gould was one of the most celebrated and talked-about pianists of the 20th century, thanks to his groundbreaking interpretations of JS Bach and idiosyncratic personality. Humphrey Burton, who knew him, remembers an extraordinary artist <\/p>
When I first met Glenn Gould over half a century ago, he was 28 and artist in residence at the 1960 Vancouver Festival.<\/strong><\/p>\n He was already a world-famous pianist, fabulously good-looking in the James Dean mould and blessed, so it seemed, with a warm, outgoing personality. And he was media-savvy, yet utterly devoted to music.<\/p>\n A pair of fly-on-the-wall films about Glenn, On the Record and Off the Record (both from 1959), had recently been shown on the BBC and made a huge impression, as did a Bernstein show called The Creative Performer, in which Gould played the Bach Piano Concerto in D minor; Stravinsky<\/a><\/strong> was the other guest and it was spellbinding.<\/p>\n