Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas; Fantasias

by James Leonard Listening to Glenn Gould play Mozart is a lot like taking a straight shot of vodka. Try any single work from this five-disc set recorded between 1966 and 1974 for Columbia of the composer's complete sonatas -- the easy C major, the hard A minor, the witty A major, or the dramatic C minor -- and everything is sharper, clearer, more focused, and more interesting. And trying a second sonata is like taking a second shot: everything is edgier, harder, more intense, and a little strange. Then, after three sonatas, Gould begins to seem boring, boorish, almost brutal in his flagrant disdain for tradition. And after four, you'll likely be too stunned to get up until long after the discs is over. Gould's playing, of course, is always impeccable. After making his name with super virtuoso recordings of Bach, Gould was widely acknowledged as one of the most formidably technical pianists of his time. But whatever the merits of his Bach, in Mozart tempos Gould's are either much too brisk or far too slow -- Adagios are taken as Andantes or Largos and Allegros as Vivaces or Andantes -- and his articulation is far too crisp -- there's little legato, no pedal, and nearly every note is struck with some degree of staccato from feather-light to hammer-heavy -- for any of Mozart's characteristic elegance and lyric beauty to survive unmarred. From the time of their first release on single LP through their re-release here as part of Sony's Glenn Gould Edition in 1994, these performances have oddly proved almost entirely uncontroversial: a few critics claim to have found them fascinating, but most merely dismissed them as particularly perverse examples of Gould's self-willed eccentricity.