Glenn Gould's Goldbergs

“There is no piece of music whose history is so divided into ‘before’ and ‘after’ by one performer as the history of the ‘Goldberg’ Variations is divided into before and after by Glenn Gould. And few artists have been so good at presenting a self-image and making it central to their art. But Gould went further: he imprinted his image of himself onto Bach. This is a good measure of Gould’s achievement — that he made an unlikeness seem a likeness.”