The irony is inescapable. The eccentric Canadian pianist stopped performing onstage in his 30s, saying he would work only in the studio. He loved to edit, mix and splice. He excluded his audience but talked about how technology would allow everyone to participate in music-making. Yes, Glenn Gould would have loved YouTube. And surely he would have approved of Raleigh-based Zenph Studios' "re-performance" of his famous first recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

The first of several projected Sony-Zenph recordings, this new CD is a re-recording of Gould's famous 1955 debut recording on a Yamaha Disklavier Pro, a concert-grand player-piano. The results are astonishing. Gone is the faint hiss-and-crackle of the mono original. Gone, too, are Gould's famous sighs and grunts. (He once said if the technology existed to eliminate them, he'd use it.) Added is multichannel separation. As a result, we hear, with unprecedented clarity, Gould's unique combination of singing line, speed and accuracy.

Gould died in 1982, at age 50, a recluse and a legend. His 1955 Goldberg set for Columbia became an instant best-seller and made him a cult figure at 22. It was a revelation.

Bach's keyboard works were best known from Wanda Landowska's harpsichord recordings. Gould showed that Bach could be played equally beautifully and authentically on the modern piano. He did without the heavy pedaling and romantic phrasing of older piano performances of Bach, and Busoni's popular transcriptions of Bach's organ works.

Gould's playing was fast, precise, clear and daring. Tempos take off as if with a will of their own. He gives contrapuntal lines equal weight, so that your attention is teasingly split trying to follow them. When the lines cross, you worry a bit that there will be an accident. This is earnest, almost angry teenage fun. (Gould recorded the Goldbergs again in 1981, shortly before his death, but the second set is comparatively ponderous. Both versions were re-issued by Sony in a 3-CD package in 2002, under the title "State of Wonder.")

Zenph's engineers have done a great service. Led by John Q. Walker, they converted the original mono master tapes to MIDI files, used Zenph's special software to analyze and modify the data, then sent it to the Disklavier and recorded the virtual performance in a multichannel format. The software analyzed not only the duration and sequence of notes, but how heavily Gould hit them, how much pedal he used, even how he lifted his hands from the keys. A few wrong notes were left in, for authenticity.

Doesn't the computer leave any of its own mark on the performance? Maybe a little. At times, the bright isolation of notes in fast passages seems superhuman -- though this could be as much the result of the digital recording as of the digital production.

Sweeter, more elegantly inflected Goldbergs have been recorded by Andras Schiff and Murray Perahia. Yet it's Gould's first version that keeps coming back, now sharper than ever.

Other Zenph-Sony releases are planned of "re-performances" by Busoni, Rachmaninoff, Albeniz and Art Tatum.