This is an excellent recording. The voicing is very clear, the touch light, and the phrasing clear. My gripes are tiny, things like in variation 13, I'd love to hear a little more leading through the phrase with the pedal, but honestly, that would probably break something else in the phrasing. I'm a violinist, not a pianist, so I don't know the Goldberg inside and out the way I do the Sonatas and Partitas.
However, I'm confused why Gould came up at all, since his recordings of Bach are lousy. His tempos are often so bizarrely fast or slow that the music is lost (particularly in the two and three part inventions). His voicing ranges from pedestrian to wrong. As for his messing with tuning and his piano, he was largely an eccentric crank who pretended that no one else was doing that, had been doing that, and was doing a better job than him. Look at the Goldberg recordings on harpsichord by Wanda Landowska (my favorite) and Anthony Newman for much, much better renditions than Gould. As for greatest pianist of the 20th century, let's be honest: Rubinstein and Horowitz were both better pianists and incomparably better musicians.
> I'm confused why Gould came up at all, since his recordings of Bach are lousy
You're not confused. You're just taking this opportunity to voice your (minority) opinion on Gould. I love his interpretation of Bach, and so do many others. His Goldberg Variations are among the most popular classical recordings. Of course his name is bound to come up.
As for "As for greatest pianist of the 20th century," why didn't you respond directly to the (single) person making that claim?
"Glenn Herbert Gould was a Canadian pianist who became one of the best-known and most celebrated classical pianists of the 20th century. He was particularly renowned as an interpreter of the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach. His playing was distinguished by remarkable technical proficiency and capacity to articulate the polyphonic texture of Bach’s music."
However, I'm confused why Gould came up at all, since his recordings of Bach are lousy. His tempos are often so bizarrely fast or slow that the music is lost (particularly in the two and three part inventions). His voicing ranges from pedestrian to wrong. As for his messing with tuning and his piano, he was largely an eccentric crank who pretended that no one else was doing that, had been doing that, and was doing a better job than him. Look at the Goldberg recordings on harpsichord by Wanda Landowska (my favorite) and Anthony Newman for much, much better renditions than Gould. As for greatest pianist of the 20th century, let's be honest: Rubinstein and Horowitz were both better pianists and incomparably better musicians.