If Astral Projection Could be Carried Out Via Piano, This is What it Would Look Like

Perhaps this is yet another sign of my lack of musical sophistication: my favorite pianist is Glenn Gould. I know, I know: lots of aficionados think Gould is all mannerisms and quirks. But watch the following clip--Gould playing Bach's Piano Concerto #1 in D minor with Leonard Bernstein and the NBC Orchestra--and tell me that this is not sublime:

(The clip is from The Art of Piano. The video, which I highly recommend, can be purchased here.)

I don't doubt that some of Gould's eccentricities were deliberately cultivated (but not a lot of them!). But I can't think of many better examples of a performer being utterly possessed by the music. The final little flourish--Gould himself dispatching the orchestra with his left hand--is, it has to be, utterly unselfconscious. Sure, there's a sense in which all Gould's tics are on full display, and he is an easy target. But it is profoundly moving to witness such complete absorption in the music. Gould is not playing Bach, Gould IS Bach, in the way that Borges argued that anyone reading Shakespeare becomes Shakespeare.