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Oxford University Press, USA

Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould

Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould

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When Mikhail Baryshnikov defected in Toronto in 1974, he admitted that he knew only three things about Canada: It had great hockey teams, a lot of wheatfields, and Glenn Gould.
In Wondrous Strange, Kevin Bazzana vividly recaptures the life of Glenn Gould, one of the most celebrated pianists of our time. Drawing on twenty years of intensive research, including unrestricted access to Gould's private papers and interviews with scores of friends and colleagues, many of
them never interviewed before, Bazzana sheds new light on such topics as Gould's family history, his secretive sexual life, and the mysterious problems that afflicted his hands in his later years. The author places Gould's distinctive traits--his eccentric interpretations, his garish onstage
demeanor, his resistance to convention--against the backdrop of his religious, upper middle-class Canadian childhood, illuminating the influence of Gould's mother as well as the lasting impact of the only piano teacher Gould ever had. Bazzana offers a fresh appreciation of Gould's concert
career--his high-profile but illness-plagued international tours, his adventurous work for Canadian music festivals, his musical and legal problems with Steinway & Sons. In 1964, Gould made the extraordinary decision to perform only for records, radio, television, and film, a turning point that the
author examines with unprecedented thoroughness (discussing, for example, his far-seeing interest in new recording technology). Here, too, are Gould's interests away from the piano, from his ambitious but failed effort to be a composer to his innovative brand of contrapuntal radio.
Richly illustrated with rare photographs, Wondrous Strange is a superbly written account of one of the most memorable and accomplished musicians of our times.


Author: Kevin Bazzana
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 04/15/2004
Pages: 528
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.00lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.38w x 1.74d
ISBN: 9780195174403

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/19/2004 pg. 53
Booklist 04/15/2004 pg. 1415
New Yorker (The) 06/14/2004 pg. 192
Library Journal 06/01/2004 pg. 136
New York Review of Books 10/07/2004 pg. 10
Booklist 11/01/2004 pg. 460

About the Author

Kevin Bazzana holds a doctorate in music history and literature from the University of California, Berkeley. A freelance writer, editor, and lecturer, he is the author of Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work, a study of Gould as pianist and interpreter. He lives in Brentwood Bay, British Columbia.

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