The City of Weimar together with the Thuringia Bach Festival and the Philip Loubser Foundation have awarded the Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship since 2020. The scholarship honours one of the most influential and well-known pianists in the world.

Glenn Gould is known both for his legendary Bach performances and also for his ground-breaking engagement with modern film and recording technology – the scholarship wishes to honour these characteristics by offering high-profile artists the opportunity to place Bach’s music and the Baroque at the centre of contemporary and innovative projects. The two-year fellowship thus enables an outstanding artist to bring an ambitious project to life using artistically signposting and innovative modern technology.

The gamba player, Liam Byrne, holds the Glenn Gould Bach Fellowship from 2024-2026 and has been devoting himself to a project relating to recording classical music from an aesthetic viewpoint. What is the reason, apart from self-marketing, that people want to record classical music now and in the past? In discussion with Pavel Kolesnikov, himself an RCM Benjamin Britten Piano Fellow of the Philip Loubser Foundation, and other guests he explores these questions in depth.