1964 was the most crucial year in Glenn Gould's professional career. He gave up concertizing after his two last recitals on March 29 in Chicago and on April 10 in Los Angeles. He then concentrated his musical life on what had always been his ultimate dream: studio recording. After a CBC TV concert in Toronto (Wednesday Festival Series in June) he went to New York to record most of Schoenberg music and his second complete Columbia record devoted to Beethoven, the three sonatas of Opus 10. Gould had always showed a clear preference for Beethoven's early keyboard pieces, saying "Almost all of those early piano works are immaculately balanced -top to bottom, register to register. In these pieces, Beethoven's sense of structure, fantasy, variety, thematic continuity, harmonic propulsion, and contrapuntal discipline, were absolutely, miraculously in alignment."
Listening to the first of those three sonatas one feels the obvious fiery enthusiasm that must have inhabited Gould while performing it in an intense, fast tempo.

I. Allegro molto e con brio 2'40"
II. Adagio molto 6'17"
III. Finale. Prestissimo 2'18"

Recorded in New York, September 1964

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