Homburger on Gould

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of Queen’s Quarterly, a journal published by Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. It also appears in my book Remembering Glenn Gould: Twenty Interviews with People Who Knew Him .
by Colin Eatock
Walter Homburger was born into a musical family in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1924, and immigrated to Canada in 1940, via England. Six years after his arrival in this country, he decided to become a promoter of classical musicians and concerts – and his first undertaking in this line of work was to manage the career of Glenn Gould. The Toronto Wunderkind pianist was just 14 years old when Homburger began to represent him.
Homburger also founded International Artists Concert Agency, and brought such distinguished artists as Vladimir Horowitz, Itzhak Perlman, Luciano Pavarotti and Louis Armstrong to Canada. In 1962 he became General Manager of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for 25 years. Today he is semi-retired, and lives with his wife on a quiet North Toronto street. This interview took place in his home on October 31, 2008.
CE: Why did you decide to become a manager of classical musicians?
WH: I was rather cheeky, I guess. I’m not a musician myself – I can’t read music. I just react like anybody else in the public, but I seem to have a good sense about it.
CE: And how did you become Glenn Gould’s manager?
WH: I first heard Glenn Gould at the Toronto Kiwanis Festival: he performed Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with Alberto Guerrero on the second piano. In those days I had a lot of time and I enjoyed going to these things. And when this kid came out and played the Fourth Beethoven Concerto, I said to myself, “This can’t be possible.”
I went backstage and met Glenn, and said I’d love to meet his parents. Soon afterwards, I went to the Goulds’ home at 32 Southwood Drive, in the Beaches, and told his parents that I wanted to manage their son. This was in 1946, and at that time I was 22 years old. My theory was that if I was right and Glenn was as good as I thought he was, then he would get a great career going. People would find out who his manager was and send me a telegram or give me a phone call.
CE: How did Gould’s parents react to this proposal?
WH: They were very kind, and said, “Sure, go ahead.” His father was a furrier with a store on the second floor of the King Edward Hotel, and his mother was a piano teacher.
CE: When you became his manager, did many people already know about Gould?
WH: In Canada, a lot of people knew him, because he had already played in public several times.1 I’m not sure that he had given concerts very far across Canada at that point, but he was well known in Toronto.
CE: Initially, how did you work with Gould?
WH: If I remember correctly, we wrote up a biography: we printed a leaflet, with a picture of him on front, and the bio on the back, and we mailed it out to concert presenters. We began to get some responses. Of course, Canada was in the forefront of interest, because people already knew about him.
CE: Gould’s first international success was a recital at the Phillips Gallery in Washington, in 1955. How did you secure this engagement?
WH: It was just by writing to the gallery, and following up with a phone call. They were interested in introducing young, up-and-coming artists, so Glenn fit in with their programming. Paul Hume, the critic, was there and wrote an absolutely rave review.2
CE: What can you tell me about your management style in the early days? What was your role?
WH: I told him that it wasn’t going to be easy, in the beginning, to get engagements. And I advised him to take time to learn as much repertoire as possible – especially concertos. I told him that once he became well known, he might not have the time to study all the works that people would ask him to play.
CE: Did he take your advice?
WH: He certainly did.
CE: What else did you do for him as his manager?
WH: When he performed concerts, we had to arrange for hotel accommodation, and for planes or trains. I can remember that sometimes when we booked a flight, Glenn would call my secretary and say, “I’ve just dreamed that the plane is going to crash. Could you please change my flight?” I also introduced him to my lawyer, and to this day his firm is still the executor of Glenn’s estate. And I introduced Glenn to my best friend, who was a stockbroker. Glenn did very well investing – or gambling – on the stock market, I don’t know which!
CE: Did you travel with him?
WH: I did, on occasion. I wasn’t in Washington, but I went to St. Catharines, Kitchener, and nearby places like that.
CE: Gould was also famous for his unconventional appearance on stage: sitting on a low chair, and hunching over the keyboard. And, as you know, he also used to hum during performances and recordings. What did you think or say about his stage presence?
WH: Glenn had his own ideas about easing the pressure on the elbows. It was his technique – and I wasn’t concerned about it. But I can tell you a story. Josef Krips was the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and I met him when Glenn played with his orchestra. He said to me, “Now about this young man, don’t let him do any funny things. Just let him play.” And I said, “Don’t worry.” After the rehearsal, Krips came up to me and said, “If he plays like that, he can do anything he wants!”3
CE: And of course he would only sit on the special chair that his father built.4
WH: Once, in Berlin, the chair was really very shaky. I said to Glenn, “I think I’m going to build another chair here, because you can’t use this one.” He tried my chair out, but he never used it. I have no idea what happened to the chair I built.
CE: So you weren’t very concerned about his stage-presence?
WH: Not at all. I have represented a lot of artists, and they all have different ways of performing. So what?
CE: What about the humming?
WH: I would tell Glenn when I could hear his humming. But I never said, “You can’t do it.” A genius will have certain idiosyncrasies that are part of his stage-presence, and that’s fine. If you say, “You can’t do it,” it will only inhibit the artist. All geniuses have their own methods.
CE: As his manager, how well did you know Gould personally? Did you become friends?
WH: Oh, yes! He would call sometimes at midnight, and then he’d talk for an hour, or an hour and a half. We had a very good rapport. The other day, I found a letter that Glenn wrote to me in 1961, congratulating me on my marriage. He wrote it while he was having lunch at the Windsor Arms Hotel. He wrote, in brackets, “Main course just arrived,” and then continued with the letter.
CE: So how would you describe him, as a man, in his younger years?
WH: He was an ordinary fellow. You didn’t know he was a great pianist, he was just an ordinary guy, and that was it.
CE: And what was he like as an artist?
WH: He had an amazing capacity to learn. I remember one recital where he played a Haydn sonata, and I’d never heard him play Haydn before. I said, “Glenn, when did you learn that sonata?” And he said, “A week ago I was in Vancouver, and I learned it on the plane back to Toronto.” He was also very fortunate in that he didn’t have to practice continuously. He could be away from the piano for several days, and his technique would come back in no time at all.
CE: Gould’s repertoire was sometimes unusual. Did you have any influence over his programming choices for recitals?
WH: None whatsoever. As I’ve said, I’m not a musician. For instance, I had never even heard of Sweelinck until Glenn played him.5 When he said he was going to start a recital with Sweelinck, I said that would be fine – but I had no idea who he was!
CE: But as a concert manager, you must have had a sense of what the public did and didn’t want.
WH: I always hoped that there would be something on the program that I’d understand and enjoy. And Glenn always included a Beethoven sonata, or something like that. By the time his reputation had reached its heights, he could have played anything.
CE: When Glenn asked for your opinion about a concert, how did you respond?
WH: He would ask, “How do you think the concert went?” And I would say this was wonderful, but that something didn’t grab me – or whatever. But it was just my own personal reaction. I would also say that he could tell from the audience how it went, because an audience is very knowledgeable, and also very honest.
CE: What other early performances were significant to his career?
WH: The first recital he gave in New York was in Town Hall.6 At the end of the concert, a man came up to me who introduced himself as David Oppenheim, from Columbia Records. He said, “I’d like to sign Glenn up for some recordings.” I asked Glenn what he thought – I always discussed anything like that with Glenn – and he said, “Great!” And Oppenheim asked him what he would like to record. Glenn said he wanted to record the Goldberg Variations. I said, “Glenn, are you sure? Because there is Wanda Landowska who has recorded the Goldbergs on the harpsichord; and there is Rosalyn Turek, who has recorded them on the piano.” But that was what he wanted to do, and that was what he did.7
The contract that we signed with Columbia is basically still in effect. In later years, after he retired from performing, Glenn would call me to tell me that he’d just received a six-month statement from Columbia. He would ask me to guess the amount of the royalty. I would try to guess high, and usually he would say, “Wrong – you are too low.”
CE: Another milestone was Gould’s tour to Russia in 1957. How did you arrange that tour?
WH: I started by contacting Gosconcert, the Russian concert agency. We corresponded, and they said they were interested. Finally, they sent us a contract in Russian rubles.
CE: Why did you want to send Gould to Russia?
WH: I felt it would give Glenn some good publicity. As it turned out, he was the first Western artist to visit the Soviet Union after the war. But it was the McCarthy era, and I was very concerned about Glenn not being able to get into the United States, after visiting Russia. So I had some correspondence with the Canadian government – with Lester Pearson, who was at that time our External Affairs minister. The government was behind the idea, and they helped me with contacts in Russia. I asked them to please let their colleagues in the USA know that they are in favour of Glenn going to Russia, so that he wouldn’t be banned from the United States.
We flew SAS to Copenhagen. In those days, the planes had berths – and Glenn said, “Let’s flip a coin to see who sleeps up, and who sleeps down.” He slept up. In Copenhagen we changed to a plane for Moscow, and were met by an interpreter, who was with us all the time we were in Russia.
Glenn’s first concert in Moscow was a recital, in a hall that was about half full. The intermission was very long, and at the time I didn’t know why. Finally, they asked Glenn to go out for the second half of the concert – and by then the place was jammed. We found out afterwards that they held the curtain because a lot of the people phoned their friends and said, “Come on down, you have to hear this.” I understand that Oistrakh was there, and so were Gilels and Richter.8 Glenn was a huge success, and the news spread like wildfire – not only in Moscow, but also in Leningrad: by the time he played there every performance was sold out. Glenn was also asked to give lectures. He said, “I’m going to lecture on Schoenberg and Berg.”9 The lectures were full, and of course everybody wanted an autograph.
CE: What effect did the tour to Russia have on his reputation?
WH: By that time, he already had a worldwide reputation, but the trip to Russia enhanced it.
CE: Yet even as Gould’s stature as a concert pianist was growing, so too was his dislike of playing in public.
WH: He just wasn’t comfortable with it. He hated the idea of 3,000 people watching him, rather than listening.
CE: When did you first start to notice that he had this problem?
WH: He may have first mentioned it in 1961, or 1962. He became more and more interested in recordings and radio productions, and things like that. And in the later part of his career he cancelled concerts more often.
CE: Did this alarm you?
WH: I was busy with other things. I had my recital series here in Toronto, and I was the manager of the National Ballet for four years. And in 1962 I joined the Toronto Symphony as manager.
CE: What can you say about the incident that led to him suing Steinway & Sons? Do you think he was really injured by a slap on the back?10
WH: I can’t say much because I wasn’t there. And I don’t like to interfere with things that are – as far as I am concerned – personal. It was a problem between Glenn and Steinway’s. I didn’t interfere.
CE: But what did you think of Gould’s way of handling the situation?
WH: I thought, “Why sue Steinway’s, who have done so much for you?” But I didn’t express these views to Glenn.
CE: Another controversial incident that occurred in New York was Leonard Bernstein’s public statement just before Gould played Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic. Some people were shocked when Bernstein described Gould’s ideas as “incompatible” with his own.11
WH: I liked his remarks very much. Sometimes a conductor has certain ideas, and a soloist will have different ideas. And often they make compromises. But in this case, perhaps the compromises were not so easy to make. I guess that’s why Lenny made his statement – and I don’t think Glenn was offended.
CE: There’s been much speculation about Glenn Gould’s romantic life.
WH: I knew nothing about it. I never asked. I never knew that he met with Lukas Foss’s wife, or anything like that. 12 I only read about it recently.
CE: Some people would say that Gould was a hypochondriac.13
WH: I would say so, yes.
CE: Did you see signs of this?
WH: I’m sure that sometimes he thought he was sick, and maybe he wasn’t. But again I say that geniuses have their own problems – and they live with them.
CE: How did your professional relationship with Gould come to an end?
WH: It came to an end when he stopped giving concerts. Over the last couple of years of his concert career, he indicated that he really didn’t like to play in public, because he thought people were there to gawk at him. His last concert was in Los Angeles, in 1964 – and that was it.14
CE: And you didn’t try to dissuade him?
WH: No.
CE: Did you have much contact with him, after he left the concert stage?
WH: For a while he would call, and we would talk. But with me he couldn’t really discuss music, and he was always very interested in talking about music. So we just socialized, so to speak.
CE: What did you learn from managing Gould?
WH: I learned how to manage artists. I’ve had only a few – but they were always musicians whom I liked as individuals and as artists.15
CE: What impact did Gould have on the musical world?
WH: Today, if someone wants to know what I’ve done, I say, “I was the manager of Glenn Gould.” And they say, “Oh, really?” – no matter where they come from. His reputation is worldwide, and it’s still right up there. Can you name another pianist today who is as well known around the world as Glenn Gould?
NOTES
1. As a child, Gould performed at numerous school and church events. Beginning in 1944, he performed in Toronto’s Kiwanis Music Festivals, and in concerts at the Royal Conservatory.
2. This recital took place on January 2, 1955. The following day, the Washington Post published a review by critic Paul Hume which began, “January 2 is early for predictions, but it is unlikely that the year 1955 will bring us a finer piano recital than that played yesterday afternoon in the Phillips Gallery.” He continued: “Glenn Gould of Toronto, Canada, and barely into his 20s, was the pianist. Few pianists play the instrument so beautifully, so lovingly, so musicianly in manner, and with such regard for its real nature and its enormous literature.”
3. Gould first performed under Krips’ baton on February 7, 1958. Krips became a great admirer of Gould, and the two musicians collaborated in subsequent concerto performances in Buffalo and London.
4. Gould’s chair was built for him by his father in 1953, and was designed so that the length of each leg could be individually adjusted. Gould used it all his life – even after it became decrepit and the stuffing fell out of the seat. Today the chair is preserved by Library and Archives Canada.
5. Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) was a Dutch composer and keyboard musician. Gould can be heard playing his Fantasia Chromatica on the CD Glenn Gould Edition: Gibbons, Byrd, Sweelinck (Sony Classical SMK52589). The performance on this disc was originally recorded for broadcast by the CBC in 1964.
6. This recital took place on January 11, 1955.
7. Gould made his first recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in June 1955 at the CBS studios in New York. When the LP was released the following year, Harold C. Schonberg of the New York Times praised Gould’s “clear sharp technique that enables him to toss off the contrapuntal intricacies of the writing with no apparent effort.”
8. This recital took place on May 7, in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. It is unlikely that any of the famous musicians mentioned by Homburger – the violinist David Oistrakh or the pianists Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter – had ever heard of Gould before this event.
9. This lecture-recital took place on May 12, at the Moscow Conservatory. Entitled “Music of the West,” Gould’s lecture focussed on the modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples, even though these composers were officially frowned upon in the Soviet Union.
10. In 1960 Gould sued Steinway & Sons for $300,000, because of an incident that occurred in the piano manufacturer’s New York showrooms in December 1959. Gould alleged that a piano technician named William Hupfer caused him an injury when the man greeted Gould with a friendly slap on the back. The dispute dragged on for more than a year and was eventually settled out of court.
11. This performance took place on April 6, 1962. Disagreements between Gould and Bernstein arose during rehearsal for this concert, as Gould wished to play the first movement of the concerto at a much slower tempo than Bernstein was used to. Before the performance, Bernstein made a public statement in which he carefully hedged his bets. On one hand, he gave full credit to Gould for the “unorthodox” musical interpretation that the audience was about to hear. On the other, he made it clear that he did not agree with Gould. Bernstein cryptically concluded, “I can assure you that it has been an adventure this week collaborating with Mr. Gould on this Brahms concerto.”
12. According to an article that appeared in the Toronto Star on August 25, 2007, Gould carried on a secret love affair for five years with Cornelia Foss, a painter and the wife of American composer and conductor Lukas Foss. The article claimed that the pair saw each other frequently between 1967 and 1972, when Foss ended the affair. This relationship is further discussed in the documentary film Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, by Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont.
13. Gould had an intense fear of germs, and sometimes refused to shake hands with people. He was also obsessed with measuring and recording his own vital signs, including his temperature, blood pressure and sleeping patterns. Moreover, he medicated himself with Valium, Librax, Placidyl, Dalmane, Nembutal, Luminal, Aldomet, Indoral and other prescription drugs.
14. Gould’s withdrawal from the concert stage did not mean an end to his career. He remained active as a recording artist, releasing numerous solo discs, and collaborating in the recording studio with such artists as the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. As well, he wrote about music, dabbled in composition and conducting, made several television appearances and created innovative radio documentaries for the CBC.
15. Homburger’s small but prestigious roster of classical musicians has included the baritone Victor Braun, the bass Jan Rubes and the pianist Louis Lortie. Currently he has just one client, the violinist James Ehnes.
© Colin Eatock 2009
by Colin Eatock
Walter Homburger was born into a musical family in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1924, and immigrated to Canada in 1940, via England. Six years after his arrival in this country, he decided to become a promoter of classical musicians and concerts – and his first undertaking in this line of work was to manage the career of Glenn Gould. The Toronto Wunderkind pianist was just 14 years old when Homburger began to represent him.
Homburger also founded International Artists Concert Agency, and brought such distinguished artists as Vladimir Horowitz, Itzhak Perlman, Luciano Pavarotti and Louis Armstrong to Canada. In 1962 he became General Manager of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, a position he held for 25 years. Today he is semi-retired, and lives with his wife on a quiet North Toronto street. This interview took place in his home on October 31, 2008.
CE: Why did you decide to become a manager of classical musicians?
WH: I was rather cheeky, I guess. I’m not a musician myself – I can’t read music. I just react like anybody else in the public, but I seem to have a good sense about it.
CE: And how did you become Glenn Gould’s manager?
WH: I first heard Glenn Gould at the Toronto Kiwanis Festival: he performed Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, with Alberto Guerrero on the second piano. In those days I had a lot of time and I enjoyed going to these things. And when this kid came out and played the Fourth Beethoven Concerto, I said to myself, “This can’t be possible.”
I went backstage and met Glenn, and said I’d love to meet his parents. Soon afterwards, I went to the Goulds’ home at 32 Southwood Drive, in the Beaches, and told his parents that I wanted to manage their son. This was in 1946, and at that time I was 22 years old. My theory was that if I was right and Glenn was as good as I thought he was, then he would get a great career going. People would find out who his manager was and send me a telegram or give me a phone call.
CE: How did Gould’s parents react to this proposal?
WH: They were very kind, and said, “Sure, go ahead.” His father was a furrier with a store on the second floor of the King Edward Hotel, and his mother was a piano teacher.
CE: When you became his manager, did many people already know about Gould?
WH: In Canada, a lot of people knew him, because he had already played in public several times.1 I’m not sure that he had given concerts very far across Canada at that point, but he was well known in Toronto.
CE: Initially, how did you work with Gould?
WH: If I remember correctly, we wrote up a biography: we printed a leaflet, with a picture of him on front, and the bio on the back, and we mailed it out to concert presenters. We began to get some responses. Of course, Canada was in the forefront of interest, because people already knew about him.
CE: Gould’s first international success was a recital at the Phillips Gallery in Washington, in 1955. How did you secure this engagement?
WH: It was just by writing to the gallery, and following up with a phone call. They were interested in introducing young, up-and-coming artists, so Glenn fit in with their programming. Paul Hume, the critic, was there and wrote an absolutely rave review.2
CE: What can you tell me about your management style in the early days? What was your role?
WH: I told him that it wasn’t going to be easy, in the beginning, to get engagements. And I advised him to take time to learn as much repertoire as possible – especially concertos. I told him that once he became well known, he might not have the time to study all the works that people would ask him to play.
CE: Did he take your advice?
WH: He certainly did.
CE: What else did you do for him as his manager?
WH: When he performed concerts, we had to arrange for hotel accommodation, and for planes or trains. I can remember that sometimes when we booked a flight, Glenn would call my secretary and say, “I’ve just dreamed that the plane is going to crash. Could you please change my flight?” I also introduced him to my lawyer, and to this day his firm is still the executor of Glenn’s estate. And I introduced Glenn to my best friend, who was a stockbroker. Glenn did very well investing – or gambling – on the stock market, I don’t know which!
CE: Did you travel with him?
WH: I did, on occasion. I wasn’t in Washington, but I went to St. Catharines, Kitchener, and nearby places like that.
CE: Gould was also famous for his unconventional appearance on stage: sitting on a low chair, and hunching over the keyboard. And, as you know, he also used to hum during performances and recordings. What did you think or say about his stage presence?
WH: Glenn had his own ideas about easing the pressure on the elbows. It was his technique – and I wasn’t concerned about it. But I can tell you a story. Josef Krips was the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and I met him when Glenn played with his orchestra. He said to me, “Now about this young man, don’t let him do any funny things. Just let him play.” And I said, “Don’t worry.” After the rehearsal, Krips came up to me and said, “If he plays like that, he can do anything he wants!”3
CE: And of course he would only sit on the special chair that his father built.4
WH: Once, in Berlin, the chair was really very shaky. I said to Glenn, “I think I’m going to build another chair here, because you can’t use this one.” He tried my chair out, but he never used it. I have no idea what happened to the chair I built.
CE: So you weren’t very concerned about his stage-presence?
WH: Not at all. I have represented a lot of artists, and they all have different ways of performing. So what?
CE: What about the humming?
WH: I would tell Glenn when I could hear his humming. But I never said, “You can’t do it.” A genius will have certain idiosyncrasies that are part of his stage-presence, and that’s fine. If you say, “You can’t do it,” it will only inhibit the artist. All geniuses have their own methods.
CE: As his manager, how well did you know Gould personally? Did you become friends?
WH: Oh, yes! He would call sometimes at midnight, and then he’d talk for an hour, or an hour and a half. We had a very good rapport. The other day, I found a letter that Glenn wrote to me in 1961, congratulating me on my marriage. He wrote it while he was having lunch at the Windsor Arms Hotel. He wrote, in brackets, “Main course just arrived,” and then continued with the letter.
CE: So how would you describe him, as a man, in his younger years?
WH: He was an ordinary fellow. You didn’t know he was a great pianist, he was just an ordinary guy, and that was it.
CE: And what was he like as an artist?
WH: He had an amazing capacity to learn. I remember one recital where he played a Haydn sonata, and I’d never heard him play Haydn before. I said, “Glenn, when did you learn that sonata?” And he said, “A week ago I was in Vancouver, and I learned it on the plane back to Toronto.” He was also very fortunate in that he didn’t have to practice continuously. He could be away from the piano for several days, and his technique would come back in no time at all.
CE: Gould’s repertoire was sometimes unusual. Did you have any influence over his programming choices for recitals?
WH: None whatsoever. As I’ve said, I’m not a musician. For instance, I had never even heard of Sweelinck until Glenn played him.5 When he said he was going to start a recital with Sweelinck, I said that would be fine – but I had no idea who he was!
CE: But as a concert manager, you must have had a sense of what the public did and didn’t want.
WH: I always hoped that there would be something on the program that I’d understand and enjoy. And Glenn always included a Beethoven sonata, or something like that. By the time his reputation had reached its heights, he could have played anything.
CE: When Glenn asked for your opinion about a concert, how did you respond?
WH: He would ask, “How do you think the concert went?” And I would say this was wonderful, but that something didn’t grab me – or whatever. But it was just my own personal reaction. I would also say that he could tell from the audience how it went, because an audience is very knowledgeable, and also very honest.
CE: What other early performances were significant to his career?
WH: The first recital he gave in New York was in Town Hall.6 At the end of the concert, a man came up to me who introduced himself as David Oppenheim, from Columbia Records. He said, “I’d like to sign Glenn up for some recordings.” I asked Glenn what he thought – I always discussed anything like that with Glenn – and he said, “Great!” And Oppenheim asked him what he would like to record. Glenn said he wanted to record the Goldberg Variations. I said, “Glenn, are you sure? Because there is Wanda Landowska who has recorded the Goldbergs on the harpsichord; and there is Rosalyn Turek, who has recorded them on the piano.” But that was what he wanted to do, and that was what he did.7
The contract that we signed with Columbia is basically still in effect. In later years, after he retired from performing, Glenn would call me to tell me that he’d just received a six-month statement from Columbia. He would ask me to guess the amount of the royalty. I would try to guess high, and usually he would say, “Wrong – you are too low.”
CE: Another milestone was Gould’s tour to Russia in 1957. How did you arrange that tour?
WH: I started by contacting Gosconcert, the Russian concert agency. We corresponded, and they said they were interested. Finally, they sent us a contract in Russian rubles.
CE: Why did you want to send Gould to Russia?
WH: I felt it would give Glenn some good publicity. As it turned out, he was the first Western artist to visit the Soviet Union after the war. But it was the McCarthy era, and I was very concerned about Glenn not being able to get into the United States, after visiting Russia. So I had some correspondence with the Canadian government – with Lester Pearson, who was at that time our External Affairs minister. The government was behind the idea, and they helped me with contacts in Russia. I asked them to please let their colleagues in the USA know that they are in favour of Glenn going to Russia, so that he wouldn’t be banned from the United States.
We flew SAS to Copenhagen. In those days, the planes had berths – and Glenn said, “Let’s flip a coin to see who sleeps up, and who sleeps down.” He slept up. In Copenhagen we changed to a plane for Moscow, and were met by an interpreter, who was with us all the time we were in Russia.
Glenn’s first concert in Moscow was a recital, in a hall that was about half full. The intermission was very long, and at the time I didn’t know why. Finally, they asked Glenn to go out for the second half of the concert – and by then the place was jammed. We found out afterwards that they held the curtain because a lot of the people phoned their friends and said, “Come on down, you have to hear this.” I understand that Oistrakh was there, and so were Gilels and Richter.8 Glenn was a huge success, and the news spread like wildfire – not only in Moscow, but also in Leningrad: by the time he played there every performance was sold out. Glenn was also asked to give lectures. He said, “I’m going to lecture on Schoenberg and Berg.”9 The lectures were full, and of course everybody wanted an autograph.
CE: What effect did the tour to Russia have on his reputation?
WH: By that time, he already had a worldwide reputation, but the trip to Russia enhanced it.
CE: Yet even as Gould’s stature as a concert pianist was growing, so too was his dislike of playing in public.
WH: He just wasn’t comfortable with it. He hated the idea of 3,000 people watching him, rather than listening.
CE: When did you first start to notice that he had this problem?
WH: He may have first mentioned it in 1961, or 1962. He became more and more interested in recordings and radio productions, and things like that. And in the later part of his career he cancelled concerts more often.
CE: Did this alarm you?
WH: I was busy with other things. I had my recital series here in Toronto, and I was the manager of the National Ballet for four years. And in 1962 I joined the Toronto Symphony as manager.
CE: What can you say about the incident that led to him suing Steinway & Sons? Do you think he was really injured by a slap on the back?10
WH: I can’t say much because I wasn’t there. And I don’t like to interfere with things that are – as far as I am concerned – personal. It was a problem between Glenn and Steinway’s. I didn’t interfere.
CE: But what did you think of Gould’s way of handling the situation?
WH: I thought, “Why sue Steinway’s, who have done so much for you?” But I didn’t express these views to Glenn.
CE: Another controversial incident that occurred in New York was Leonard Bernstein’s public statement just before Gould played Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with the New York Philharmonic. Some people were shocked when Bernstein described Gould’s ideas as “incompatible” with his own.11
WH: I liked his remarks very much. Sometimes a conductor has certain ideas, and a soloist will have different ideas. And often they make compromises. But in this case, perhaps the compromises were not so easy to make. I guess that’s why Lenny made his statement – and I don’t think Glenn was offended.
CE: There’s been much speculation about Glenn Gould’s romantic life.
WH: I knew nothing about it. I never asked. I never knew that he met with Lukas Foss’s wife, or anything like that. 12 I only read about it recently.
CE: Some people would say that Gould was a hypochondriac.13
WH: I would say so, yes.
CE: Did you see signs of this?
WH: I’m sure that sometimes he thought he was sick, and maybe he wasn’t. But again I say that geniuses have their own problems – and they live with them.
CE: How did your professional relationship with Gould come to an end?
WH: It came to an end when he stopped giving concerts. Over the last couple of years of his concert career, he indicated that he really didn’t like to play in public, because he thought people were there to gawk at him. His last concert was in Los Angeles, in 1964 – and that was it.14
CE: And you didn’t try to dissuade him?
WH: No.
CE: Did you have much contact with him, after he left the concert stage?
WH: For a while he would call, and we would talk. But with me he couldn’t really discuss music, and he was always very interested in talking about music. So we just socialized, so to speak.
CE: What did you learn from managing Gould?
WH: I learned how to manage artists. I’ve had only a few – but they were always musicians whom I liked as individuals and as artists.15
CE: What impact did Gould have on the musical world?
WH: Today, if someone wants to know what I’ve done, I say, “I was the manager of Glenn Gould.” And they say, “Oh, really?” – no matter where they come from. His reputation is worldwide, and it’s still right up there. Can you name another pianist today who is as well known around the world as Glenn Gould?
NOTES
1. As a child, Gould performed at numerous school and church events. Beginning in 1944, he performed in Toronto’s Kiwanis Music Festivals, and in concerts at the Royal Conservatory.
2. This recital took place on January 2, 1955. The following day, the Washington Post published a review by critic Paul Hume which began, “January 2 is early for predictions, but it is unlikely that the year 1955 will bring us a finer piano recital than that played yesterday afternoon in the Phillips Gallery.” He continued: “Glenn Gould of Toronto, Canada, and barely into his 20s, was the pianist. Few pianists play the instrument so beautifully, so lovingly, so musicianly in manner, and with such regard for its real nature and its enormous literature.”
3. Gould first performed under Krips’ baton on February 7, 1958. Krips became a great admirer of Gould, and the two musicians collaborated in subsequent concerto performances in Buffalo and London.
4. Gould’s chair was built for him by his father in 1953, and was designed so that the length of each leg could be individually adjusted. Gould used it all his life – even after it became decrepit and the stuffing fell out of the seat. Today the chair is preserved by Library and Archives Canada.
5. Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) was a Dutch composer and keyboard musician. Gould can be heard playing his Fantasia Chromatica on the CD Glenn Gould Edition: Gibbons, Byrd, Sweelinck (Sony Classical SMK52589). The performance on this disc was originally recorded for broadcast by the CBC in 1964.
6. This recital took place on January 11, 1955.
7. Gould made his first recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in June 1955 at the CBS studios in New York. When the LP was released the following year, Harold C. Schonberg of the New York Times praised Gould’s “clear sharp technique that enables him to toss off the contrapuntal intricacies of the writing with no apparent effort.”
8. This recital took place on May 7, in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. It is unlikely that any of the famous musicians mentioned by Homburger – the violinist David Oistrakh or the pianists Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter – had ever heard of Gould before this event.
9. This lecture-recital took place on May 12, at the Moscow Conservatory. Entitled “Music of the West,” Gould’s lecture focussed on the modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg and his disciples, even though these composers were officially frowned upon in the Soviet Union.
10. In 1960 Gould sued Steinway & Sons for $300,000, because of an incident that occurred in the piano manufacturer’s New York showrooms in December 1959. Gould alleged that a piano technician named William Hupfer caused him an injury when the man greeted Gould with a friendly slap on the back. The dispute dragged on for more than a year and was eventually settled out of court.
11. This performance took place on April 6, 1962. Disagreements between Gould and Bernstein arose during rehearsal for this concert, as Gould wished to play the first movement of the concerto at a much slower tempo than Bernstein was used to. Before the performance, Bernstein made a public statement in which he carefully hedged his bets. On one hand, he gave full credit to Gould for the “unorthodox” musical interpretation that the audience was about to hear. On the other, he made it clear that he did not agree with Gould. Bernstein cryptically concluded, “I can assure you that it has been an adventure this week collaborating with Mr. Gould on this Brahms concerto.”
12. According to an article that appeared in the Toronto Star on August 25, 2007, Gould carried on a secret love affair for five years with Cornelia Foss, a painter and the wife of American composer and conductor Lukas Foss. The article claimed that the pair saw each other frequently between 1967 and 1972, when Foss ended the affair. This relationship is further discussed in the documentary film Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, by Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont.
13. Gould had an intense fear of germs, and sometimes refused to shake hands with people. He was also obsessed with measuring and recording his own vital signs, including his temperature, blood pressure and sleeping patterns. Moreover, he medicated himself with Valium, Librax, Placidyl, Dalmane, Nembutal, Luminal, Aldomet, Indoral and other prescription drugs.
14. Gould’s withdrawal from the concert stage did not mean an end to his career. He remained active as a recording artist, releasing numerous solo discs, and collaborating in the recording studio with such artists as the violinist Yehudi Menuhin and the soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. As well, he wrote about music, dabbled in composition and conducting, made several television appearances and created innovative radio documentaries for the CBC.
15. Homburger’s small but prestigious roster of classical musicians has included the baritone Victor Braun, the bass Jan Rubes and the pianist Louis Lortie. Currently he has just one client, the violinist James Ehnes.
© Colin Eatock 2009