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On 3 January, 1956, a 23-year-old pianist called Glenn Gould released a recording of Bach鈥檚 Goldberg Variations that would change the way the classical world thought about a masterpiece, change the way it thought about interpretation, about mannerisms, about musical extremes. Ultimately, it would change the way we all think of albums as artefacts in themselves. Glenn Gould鈥檚 vision of what a recording could achieve was at the vanguard of cultural modernity. Like the great pop music producers to come, he figured out how to use the studio as a collaborator in the the music itself.

The original Columbia Masterworks album cover shows 30 photos of Glenn Gould, lined up like negatives in a film strip. There was one portrait for each Goldberg variation. It was a stroke of marketing genius. By comparing the player to the music itself, the album launched a cult following for Gould that no other classical musician has since enjoyed (or suffered).

The executives at Columbia hadn鈥檛 always been keen on the Goldberg idea. It鈥檚 worth remembering that in the 1950s, this music wasn鈥檛 a standard part of the piano repertoire. The label wanted Gould to choose something more normal, more "entry level2 - but they also shrewdly suspected that Glenn Gould鈥檚 eccentricity and dogged-mindedness might prove a selling point.

And so the sessions went ahead. It was sweltering in Manhattan in June 1955. Gould turned up at the studio with his trademark rickety piano chair that his father had made for him as a kid, with a bottle of pills and a heavy winter coat, despite the heat. He soaked his hands in hot water for 20 minutes before he would play a note. He recorded 21 takes of the opening aria alone.

Gould had immense respect for Bach and exacting ideas about how to pursue a route through the counterpoint, even at eyewatering speeds - deploying his trademark percussive attack to make sure his listeners could follow him. This was before the early music revolution of the 1960s, so Baroque music still tended to be smothered with romantic smudges. By comparison, Glenn Gould鈥檚 playing was like the roughest, toughest skin exfoliator: abrasive to the point of painful, but afterwards revealing raw, pure skin.

Gould stopped performing in public less than ten years after the release of the 1955 Goldbergs, renouncing live performances as 鈥渂lood sport鈥�. Instead, he began a love affair with the studio - obsessing over microphone placement and intimacy of sound.

Meanwhilec his debut album became Columbia Records鈥� best selling classical recording of all time: more than 100,000 copies sold by the time of Gould鈥檚 early death in 1982. The year before he died, he recorded The Goldbergs again - more measured this time, and 13 minutes slower in total. But it was the extremes of the original that launched the phenomenon. The album was later rereleased as The 1955 Goldberg Variations 鈥� Birth of a Legend. The interpretation is so iconic that Bach鈥檚 music itself is billed as a collaboration.

This is one of 100 significant musical moments explored by 麻豆社 Radio 3鈥檚 Essential Classics as part of Our Classical Century, a 麻豆社 season celebrating a momentous 100 years in music from 1918 to 2018. Visit bbc.co.uk/ourclassicalcentury to watch and listen to all programmes in the season.

This is an excerpt from the first variation, performed by Glenn Gould on his 1955 debut album.

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