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Soloists and conductors found that Gould would often play over them; improved to the point they could not follow, had extreme tempo and dynamic changes, and would often cancel at the last minute with little for an explanation. Glen strongly disagreed with common music interpretation and refused to conform.

On October 1954, in Toronto, (the night after Hurricane Hazel Struck) Gould played an amazing solo performance, but massacred violinist Morry Kerman. During a performance with the New York Philharmonic, Bernstien, the conductor, told his audience that he was not responsible for the quality of the night's performance with Gould.

Gould made his debut orchestral performance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1945 and had his opening performance in the United States at the Phillips Gallery in Washington D.C. in 1955. Glen was also honoured with a performance in the maiden Stratford Festival in 1953. In 1957, he was the first North American musician to perform in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. He enjoyed two weeks of performances in Leningrad and Moscow along with a performance with the Berlin Philharmonic at the Vienna Festival.

Gould also dabbled in composing. Throughout his lifetime, Glen wrote a total of 12 pieces as well as cadenzas for Beethoven's "Piano Concerto No. 1" and variations on a wide variety of works. His most famous piece is his "String Quartet Opus 1."

His Television and Radio Career

Out of all of his performances, it was his Christmas Eve performance, in 1950 at CBC, which changed his life. After the performance, Gould wandered into the mixing studio and began to play with the recording. He was in awe that he could make the piece sound exactly the way he had dreamed simply by lowering the upper registers and increasing the volume of the lower voices.

Gould began to focus on recording at CBC, Radio France, CBS Records, PBS, and the BBC and gave up live concerts in 1954. He recorded all of Mozart's and five of Beethoven's piano concertos along with most of Bach's compositions. "The Art of Fugue" would be the only work Glen would record on organ. Later on, Gould also made some recordings as a conductor. One of these, "Seigfried Idyll" by Wagner, would be his last recording.

His most famous recording was Bach's "Goldberg Variations" made in New York City in 1955. It re-released by CBS Masterworks in 1982. In total, the work earned him several Grammy's and Juno's along with the "Grand Prix du Disques" award from the L'Acadmie Charles

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