Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Gould's CD 318 - Which recordings?

Here is a list of complete(?) recordings by Gould:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Gould_discography

But I would like to know for each recording: Which piano was used (specifically if CD 318 was used or not) and preferably who was the tuner/technician (Verne Edquist etc).

Where can I get this information?

At the moment I am specifically wondering about the piano used for the inventions and sinfonias, it is obvious that the regulation is not normal with it's bobbling hammers and so on (by request of Gould I read somewhere). But was this CD 318?

Also were any recordings made with his beloved Chickering?

Also were any recordings made with his favorite piano before the CD 318? The one that got dropped and destroyed, I forgot the designation.

I find the Inventions and Sinfonias recording to be almost unbearable because of that piano’s quirks.

I love these recordings. Granted, the sound is not the same boring, old sound of any other recording. But it matches the music and the playing nicely.

I think if you read "A Romance on Three Legs" you'll find the chronology of 318's heyday. I don't have time to go looking at the moment, sorry.

I am actually reading it at the moment, that's why I am asking

The Chickering was Gould's salon piano growing up. He didn't record on it professionally.

I presume that "CD 318" refers to a Steinway Concert & Artists Model D piano that was used by Glenn Gould. Was that a piano that Gould owned personally, or was it simply the one that he used for concerts and recordings? In what year was it made?

Here's one summary of the story of Glenn Gould and CD-318, evidently built in 1945 or so and discovered by Gould in 1960.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/glenn-goulds-steinway/

After Gould's death, the piano was donated to Library & Archives Canada. It lived for many years in the auditorium of the Archives building on Wellington Street, in Ottawa, a few blocks from Parliament Hill.

It was then moved the Canadian Museum of Civilisation, and is now at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

I had the opportunity to play it a number of times. My ensemble, Norteño, was lucky enough to record our first CD, entitled "Milonga d'automne" on this piano. The CD is available on iTunes.

I found out later that Gould had loaned to the piano to Bill Evans for his CD "Conversations with Myself".

I remember first listening to Glenn Gold's inventions album after checking it out from the library as an LP, and being puzzled by the piano. My recollection is that Gould addressed the pianos quirks in the liner notes, expressing an enamoration with the piano that made him feel the quirks were worth it.

A romance on three legs does not mention any other piano that he was so besotted with, so I assume this was CD 318.

I ws trying to find the original album notes, but the closest I found was this paragraph which does quote them, confirming my recollections:

"In the course of adjusting CD 318 for the Inventions session, Gould managed to afflict it with a bizarre “hiccup” effect in the middle register, by which random sustained notes were repeated. Gould acknowledged this in the album notes (to Columbia MS 6622) but professed to find the result charming and justified it as related to “the clavichord's propensity for an intra-tone vibrato.” He went on to assert his “sober conviction that no piano need feel duty-bound to always sound like a piano.”"

This was the source for that paragraph: http://www.classicalnotes.net/columns/gould.html

I'm curious about the infamous crack in the plate of CD318. What was done to try to repair it? Is it still there and how to they work with it when it is used for performances? I wonder why they just didn't send it to Steinway and install a new plate after it was dropped? Is all of that covered in the book?

I just can’t appreciate the charming quirks of a clearly defective piano. But then I never play my digitals using the “honky tonk” setting, so what do I know?

Chacun a son gout.

> Is all of that covered in the book?

Yes

There are noticeable oddities in the S6 sample on the CP4, but Yamaha claims they left them in because the oddities were already there in the S6 they sampled.

I don't recall Yamaha ever explaining anything before. So that's something, I guess.

Yes, all of Gould's recordings sound like a honky tonk piano ;-)

Chacun a son Gould?

Not all. But this one, yeah, kinda.