the leading tone

You know, someone said to me the other day that now that the fortepiano is making such an extraordinary comeback, and people are playing Chopin-period Pleyels and so forth, that in no time at all there will be nothing for the contemporary piano to do except maybe the Rachmaninoff Third…

…I think frankly that the whole issue of Bach on the piano is a red herring. I love the harpsichord—as you know, I made a harpsichord record some years ago—and I’m very fond of the fortepiano for such things as Mozart concertos and so forth. I’m certainly not going to sit here and argue that the modern piano has some sort of intrinsic value just because it’s modern, that new is better because it’s new. 

But having said that, I must also say that the piano at its best offers a range of articulation that far surpasses any older instrument, that it actually can be made to serve the contrapuntal qualities of Bach, for example, the linear concepts of Bach, in a way that the harpsichord, for all its beauty and charm and authenticity, you know, cannot. 

And as far as the question of whether it’s appropriate to play this music on a piano is concerned: I think one has to remember that here was a man, Bach, who was himself one of the great transcribers of all time. A man who took Marcello’s Oboe Concerto, for example, and made it a solo harpsichord piece, who rewrote his own violin concertos for the keyboard, and vice-versa…his masterpiece, I think, the Art of the Fugue, works on the harpsichord, the organ, for strings…

I think the evidence suggests that Bach didn’t give a hoot about particular sonorities. But it also suggests that he cared a great deal, to a fanatical degree, even, about the integrity of his structures…I think he would love to hear his Brandenburg Concertos as Wendy Carlos has realized them on the synthesizer!

- Glenn Gould, 1981 interview with Tim Page