More than 200 Glenn Gould fans celebrated what would have been the famed pianist's 74th birthday Monday witnessing a new technology that brought his music back to life.
A rapt audience listened as a gleaming black Yamaha piano replicated Gould's iconic 1955 version of Bach's Goldberg Variations — note-perfect and with his exact keystrokes and foot pedal movements.
"I was totally wowed," a woman in the audience told CBC News. "The only thing missing was a hologram of Gould actually playing."
Digital player piano
The performance, which featured an instrument akin to a digital player piano, took place at CBC's Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto and showcased new technology from U.S. firm Zenph Studios.
The system includes computer software that analyzes imperfect archival analog recordings and converts the information for inputting into a specially designed piano. The instrument — in this case a Yamaha Disklavier Pro — was also programmed with myriad other instructions describing Gould's exact playing technique.
"We discover all the notes that were played in the recording and then describe every note — how it was pressed, how your finger came up, how long it lasted — and describe that back to the computer inside of this amazing robotic piano," said Zenph co-founder John Q. Walker.
Performance draws criticism
While some in Monday's audience raved about the so-called virtual re-performance, others criticized the project.
"Glenn Gould was devoted to technology and that's the only thing that this has to do with what Glenn Gould was about," said musician Ron Davis.
"He gave up concert halls, he gave up concerts. And to have a concert where they reproduce a recording — basically it was just a bad reproduction of a recording that will end up in a profit centre for a major multinational corporation — is beyond absurd," he said.
True portrait of Gould's playing: CBC host
Though the remastered performance does not include Gould's trademark physical nuances — his humming or shoe shufflings — it is a true representation ofthe Canadian icon, said Andrew Craig, host of CBC Radio Two's In Performance.
A vocalist, instrumentalist, producer and composer, Craig was excited about the prospects of the new technology.
"The idea of taking an existing recording — just a recording, which is really just like a digital picture of sound — and putting that into a piano and getting the piano to replicate that and with all the nuances and the gestures that a pianist would have, this is a radical thing," he said.
Sony Music is preparing to release an album featuring Zenph's new, remastered version of Gould's Goldberg Variations — only the first in a series of famed piano works Zenph has planned to resurrect.
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