I can't claim to be familiar with all Glenn Gould's recordings of earlier music, but the pianist who emerges from these Schoenberg performances is clearly rather special. Above all, performances are what we get: interpretations of the printed texts that may well take certain liberties but which more often than not, do so in ways which are musically persuasive rather than merely eccentric or extravagant.
With the unpredictability comes inevitable unevenness. In the seminal Op. 23 pieces Gould gets off to a mannered, splashy start, yet the first piece as a whole is like a sequence of psychologically acute thumbnail sketches. There is clearly an analytical mind at work here, and the finely balanced readings of the second and fourth pieces show that mind at its best. The third piece works less well—too fragmented, its expressive twists and turns exaggerated. Gould's tendency to respond to every nuance of this febrile music as if his life depended on it can serve to deprive the really big moments of their necessary impact, as in his reading of the turbulent Op. 11 No. 3, for example. A rather casual attitude to Schoenberg's quieter dynamic markings may be in part the result of the recordings, though in general the remasterings have produced a plausible piano sound with a realistic dynamic range.
Gould is at his brilliant best in the tricky Suite Op. 25. His sensitive contrapuntal voicing works wonders for the disproportionately long ''Intermezzo'', and the dance movements are models of needle-sharp yet flexible rhythm. I didn't care for the extracts from Pierrot lunaire—the performances sound like rehearsals—but the Phantasy with violin is invigoratingly brittle, and the Ode to Napoleon is as true to the iconoclastic spirit of that forceful piece as any recording I've heard. Finally, this version of the Piano Concerto, though still sounding dry and cramped as a recording, and less concerned with good manners than most of its rivals, sweeps reservations about this or that detail aside as it creates a special cumulative effect. The exuberant final stages make it absolutely clear that, for Gould, Schoenberg was a composer of heart as well as brain.'