Over New Year, I binge-watched as many Glenn Gould videos as I could find. I was fascinated with what he had to say about Schoenberg, Mozart and life in general.

Then today YT suggested this vid of GG on Richter. Knowing Gould liked to play pranks, I thought at first he was pretending to be a British music critic for the purposes of parody (or just larking about), but apparently this was first shown on Russian TV and the original English audio was lost so they got someone to voice it over.

This documentary on Richter is well worth watching. Quite a different personality and musician from Gould. I liked what he had to say about playing in the dark: “That’s for the sake of concentration, so that the audience listens better.” “One shouldn’t watch?” asks the interviewer. “Watch what?” “The performer.” “His hands?” (Grimace.) “Nyet!” “The expression on his face?” “What for?”

Compare what Richter says about choosing a piano to play for a performance with the lengths Gould went to, and let’s not even mention his chair!

Just these bars of Richter playing Schubert completely won me over.

As did Glenn Gould’s Brahms Ballade N. 10, despite my being no big fan of Brahms.