Tan Bing'er: Pioneer and rebellious genius "strange uncle" Gould

Only a person who loves music to the extreme can play with his life with the same confidence and passion as Gould. Music is his breath.

Gould said: "The piano is a counterpoint instrument that can only become interesting if it is handled in both the horizontal and vertical directions. His interpretation of Bach was a completely new leap forward, and he reacquainted most people with Bach and Bach's music.

Being able to play Bach is a few light-years away from becoming a Bach. Of course, Gould always cared only about being himself. In a rebellious and avant-garde manner, he expressed the old Bach as a deconstructed Bach; the unclear Bach was expressed as a clear Bach. In other words, he changed the classical Bach into the poetic Bach of understanding, that is, the Bach who was close to theology—from aesthetics to poetics, and then to the theological Bach. And this is the basis for the existence of the Gould myth, and the rest is smoke, which will gradually dissipate over time.

To paraphrase Schiff, the professional exams are played by Bach, and they play in a very boring way, with a lot of pedals, and that kind of vague fugue... Gould shows us that it is possible to play Bach without following the nineteenth-century playing style, especially without using all the pedals as chopin and Liszt did. His Bach jumping and sturdy, jazzy taste, with a variety of voice parts and polyphonic structures visible throughout.

Fresh, unique, natural, and using different touches, Gould presents and interprets Bach's various parts vividly and interestingly. For example, in Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, where a large piece of arpeggio is played in Fantasia, and Bach writes only one chord of dichotomy notes, Gould leaves him room for the most genius play. He fully expresses the style of Bach's time: full of infinite vitality and philosophy, and also best interprets the tough and thick personality strength of this polyphonic music master.

Of course, in addition to Bach, there is also his interpretation of Beethoven, whether it is a performance of his concertos or variations, which are perfect. Singing is the main feature of Gourd's performance, and there is breathing, there are sentences, there are ups and downs, there is vitality. His transcendent realm of freedom, as well as the careful arrangement of each note and the treatment of the parts, are as natural as flowing water without the traces of an axe, which is not something that every pianist can do.

Perhaps what really interests Gould is always the well-structured counterparts: in addition to Bach's fugues, Beethoven's sonatas in his later years, Richard Strauss's works, and Wagner's operas, as well as the keyboard works of Hindmeth and even Schoenberg. These works are more or less Baroque, and they are exactly what Gourd regards as treasures and souls. And for everyone in the Romantic period, such as Schubert, Chopin, Liszt and other works, the eccentric Gourd actually had no interest. He even said of Chopin: "genius with only the right hand", "serious lack of vertical weave", "completely intolerable".

Gould has lived in solitude all his life. No matter how many flowers and applause there were on stage, he felt bored and lonely. It seems that no one in the world can fully understand his thought and musical philosophy. He did not even belong to this age (he had called himself "the last Puritan" and declared himself to belong to the past), so let him say that he was a genius and prophet without an aura, he belonged only to the future. Gould, a "strange man" with great ideological charm, is all waking us up: in such an era, what kind of attitude, way and face should we live and die with the world.