Glenn Gould interview excerpts
[He stopped giving concerts in 1964.]
. . . I toured for only eight years, which is really not very long. . . . I found even in my early teens that, for me the most comfortable situation was the studio environment and not the concert environment.
This suggests two things, I suppose: the first is that, except in the sense of learning a lot of rather complicated repertoire very early in life, I was not a prodigy. I was not in the Menuhin [a famous violinist who launched his career at a very early age] mold, traveling from town to town. That didn't occur to me, and fortunately didn't occur to my parents either as something that would be advantageous. But one of the results of not traveling is that, by the time I was my late teens, I had decided that there was something just a little bit degrading about giving concerts. The process was essentially distasteful. I did realize, however, that it was the most convenient way to make some money. And I was not immune to the prospect of making money. So, by the time I was in my early 20s, I thought I'd give concerts for a decade and by that time I'd be 30 and retire. Well, at least I came close! I retired at 32! Retired, that is, from giving concerts.
From the moment I began broadcasting, that medium seemed like another world, as indeed it is. The moment I began to experience the studio environment, my whole reaction to what I could do with music under the proper circumstances changed totally. From then on, concerts were less than second-best; they were merely something to be gotten through. They were a very poor substitute for a real artistic experience.
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During my teens, when I gave three or four concerts a year, I was never able to enjoy or really even evaluate the audience inspiration that one was supposed to get. When I was very young, I felt a certain sense of power when I walked onto the stage, especially to play concerto. I frankly enjoyed that sort of thing I was 13 or 14. But the enjoyment wore off rather quickly because this mysterious, magical moment of insight that is supposed to be the net result of the coming together of artist and audience never happened for me. That is not to say that there were not occasional moments -- perhaps when I was giving a concert with an esteemed conductor or playing a solo work in an especially fine hall -- when some special feeling took hold of me. I wouldn't deny that. But it didn't happen because the audience was there; it could just as well have happened at rehearsal or in a practice session. I can honestly say that I do not recall ever feeling better about the quality or performance because of the presence of an audience. Indeed, it's precisely for that reason that when I record, I banish everybody from the studio except for the people actually working on the recording. . . . I used to permit spectators occasionally . . . but I found that even the presence of one person would make me tend to show off and, to that extent, it actually got in the way of the performance. It meant that I was more concerned with their reaction time was with what I was doing. Consequently, it simply did not serve the musical end. Now if you multiply that one person by two or three thousand at a large concert, you have some idea as to the extent of my reservations about public performances as an appropriate medium for music making.
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Questioner: what about the format, the representation, for example, of the recital? There are rumors that the recital format is out, or at least on the way out.
Well, I don't go to concerts -- are rarely did, even when I was giving them, and as a matter of fact the last concert I attended was in 1967 -- so I can't honestly tell you that such a format has no validity in today's scheme of things. But it doesn't for me, certainly; as far as I'm concerned, music is something that ought to be listened to in private. I do not believe that it should be treated as group therapy or any other kind of communal experience. I think that music ought to lead the listener -- and indeed, the performer -- to a state of contemplation, and I don't think it's really possible to attain that condition with 2,999 other souls sitting all around. So my strongest objections to the concert are primarily moral rather than musical. But as far as the format of the recital is concerned, I personally don't particularly relish a sequence of the same instrumental sounds all evening, especially if they're piano sounds. There are, as you well know, many piano freaks. I just don't happen to be one of them. I don't much care for piano music.
From a set of interviews, Great Contemporary Pianists Speak for Themselves, Volume 1, Elyse Mach. Volume 1, 1980; volume 2 1988. Published by Dover.