Great Performers: Glenn Gould

Born in Toronto on 25 September 1932, Gould was at first taught by his mother, and then studied at Toronto's Royal Conservatory with Alberto Guerrero. By his late teens his artistic persona was fully formed. Right at the start he favored unusual programmes, with Bach, Byrd, Gibbons, Sweelinck, Haydn and Beethoven on one side, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Hindemith on the other – and virtually no Romantic music in between, save for Richard Strauss and occasional peeks into Brahms.

Gould's platform manner proved equally unorthodox. The pianist sat very low in a custom-made chair, without which, Gould claimed, he was not able to perform. He'd slump in the chair and sip water during orchestral tuttis in concertos. He swayed and gesticulated to the music, conducting with whatever hand was free at the time – and hummed along loudly. Apparently he conducted while driving his car, to the horror of those in the passenger seat.

For all of his international onstage triumphs, Gould claimed to hate concerts, and constantly spoke about retiring from the stage. After an April 1964 recital in Los Angeles, he never played another concert. Instead, Gould stepped up his recording activity and television work. He went on to create innovative radio documentaries and write numerous articles.

Gould viewed the recording studio as a creative laboratory, where he could experiment to his heart's content, and provoke audiences and critics alike with interpretations that turned received opinion upside down, from his idiosyncratic Wagner transcriptions and exaggeratedly brash Mozart Sonatas to his hair-trigger Beethoven, surprisingly ripe Brahms and "acoustic orchestrations" of Sibelius and Scriabin.

With the advent of digital technology, Gould re-recorded the 'Goldbergs' (in 1981). His darker, more contemplative vantage point and painstaking sense of architecture revealed a complete rethinking of the music. The recording brought Gould's career full circle; it was released just weeks before he suffered the stroke that ended his life on 4 October 1982. He remains one of the most charismatic, controversial and widely discussed and debated pianists of all time.