Glenn Gould contemplated recording Haydn's piano sonatas as early as 1971, but it was not until ten years later, when he learned from Sony of the (then) new digital recording technique, that the ideal opportunity presented itself. The project comprising six late Haydn sonatas, was considered particularly appropriate for the vastly improved brilliance and transparency of the tonal image guaranteed by digital technology.
Gould was avowedly not an 'average rococo buff', and these Haydn performances demonstrate his feeling for the music's baroque-influences. The recording itself is very close and dry and emphasizes Gould's austere approach. He applies a legato touch only sparingly and at times adopts extreme speeds in both directions. Relentlessly detached articulation in his challengingly slow performance of the first movement of the C major Sonata, HobXVI/48, for example, creates an almost unbearable stasis, but in the finale his own digital brilliance and concentration on detail in the inner voices produce an unexpected polyphonic richness.
Gould's predominantly detached articulation in contrapuntal passages is often balanced by an astonishing textural fullness in more overtly harmonic situations, such as in the C major Sonata, HobXVI/50, where he achieves effects of baroque grandeur. Specifically, his temporal division of the hands in the arpeggiando chords in bars 7 and 108 in the first movement, and again at the opening of the second movement, together with the functional role given to ornamentation in the finale, makes evident motivic connections which produce a satisfyingly coherent, through-composed result. Gould's wholesale omission of large-scale formal repeats is almost certainly designed to make such long-range motivic relationships more apparent.
Haydn's E flat major Sonata, HobXVI/52 is his most extensive piano composition, and Brendel's account is both broadly conceived and compellingly dramatic. Gould's bold reading, which balances balances forward drive in the fast outer movements with a highly focused delicacy of touch in the slow one, may strike some as emotionally too restrained; Brendel's warmer versions of these pieces generally have a much softer edge and wider emotional appeal. Nevertheless, Gould's accounts are fascinating, both for their provocative interpretative insights and for the unusually significant relationship between his performance style and the recording medium.'