Gould’s Steinway finds temporary home as National Arts Centre is renovated

By Terry Pedwell, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – The grand piano that musical legend Glenn Gould obsessed over until the day he died is no longer on public display — and won’t feel fingers over its keys for at least the next 18 months.

Gould’s Steinway CD 318 has been placed in storage at the Canadian Museum of Nature as Ottawa’s National Arts Centre undergoes extensive renovations.

The Gould piano was the first instrument to go today as the centre prepared for its $110-million facelift.

Prodigy Jan Lisiecki was on hand to help bid the instrument a fond farewell in front of a small audience.

Lisiecki performed Schumann’s “Piano Concerto in A minor” one last time before work crews began the painstaking task of tearing down the piano and boxing it up.

The piano was Gould’s “soul mate,” he said shortly after playing the final notes.

“Glenn Gould attached a particularly heavy importance to his instrument,” said Lisiecki. “He modified it quite a bit, he spent a lot of time with it, he recorded on it, he played on it.”

Indeed, Gould slaved over his Steinway, travelling with it to several concert venues.

Musical historians say his heart was shattered when, in 1971, the piano’s 159-kilogram cast-iron core was cracked, likely from being dropped during one of its many moves.

Ever the perfectionist, the eccentric Gould spent a decade trying unsuccessfully to restore its sound.

Finally, declaring that he could no longer play his beloved CD 318, Gould turned to another piano to re-record the Goldberg Variations in 1981, just one year before he died.

Now considered a significant cultural artifact, the restored piano has been on public display at the National Arts Centre since June 2014.

Since then, many a keyboard aficionado has fawned over the piano, which Gould himself once described as “a romance on three legs,” as if worshipping at an altar.

But the NAC must clear out much of its facilities for a major retrofit now underway to transform its facade in time for Canada’s 150th birthday on July 1, 2017.

While a nature museum might seem an odd storage space for a piano, it was simply a matter of finding a location with the right space and climate control to house it, said Meg Beckel, the museum’s CEO.

“Natural history museums hold the very small, in terms of insects … but we also have space for very large specimens such as dinosaurs,” Beckel said.

And while no human hands are expected to tickle Gould’s ivories while the piano is in storage, “one never knows what might happen with the dinosaurs,” Beckel joked — a reference to the fictional goings-on in the movie “Night at the Museum.”

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