Ashley, one of my favorite songs AND videos is "Regret" by New order. Good job posting the band here.
On to my small contribution, I must not be the only Glenn Gould appreciator here. His
The Solo Piano Music of Arnold Schoenberg recording was my favorite piece of vinyl, and music, for at least ten years. I have returned to him by way of Bill Evans, who is my other favorite pianist. Evans recorded
Conversations With Myself, I belatedly discovered, on the legendary Steinway favored by Gould, CD 318. This stimulated a re immersion in Gould's recordings.
This fragment of some documentary about Gould has a clip of Bernstein conducting and Gould playing Bach's D minor keyboard concerto, BWV 1052. It starts at about 3:50 and runs three minutes. I learned a new word,
decresendo, from this. Hearing Glenn Gould's in this video is one of the musical highlights of my entire life. It is the passage where the orchestra lays out and the piano gets softer and softer...and softer. Holding perfect timing and articulation the entire time. But the whole clip is great. Remember that before Glenn Gould these works were performed largely on the nearly expressionless harpsichord, or the pipe organ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkc8LjmKKMw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkc8LjmKKMw
My own warped worldview of the piano is that Bill Evans and Glenn Gould were the two greatest geniuses of the instrument and had very much in common. They also mutually admired each others work. In my universe Evans was the greatest improviser on the keyboard that ever recorded, and Gould was the greatest interpreter of J S Bach who ever lived. Since Bach was the most accomplished musician who ever lived and Jazz has been history's highest flowering of musical improvisation, that means that these men were pretty special. :) In their respective fields they were the masters of expression. But never mind that they were great pianists. What matters is they were Great - capital G - musicians.
Clark