The album was compiled from recording sessions made on seven occasions between 1965 and 1973 at New York City's Columbia 30th Street Studio and Toronto's Eaton Auditorium.

This tendency was stronger with compositions he disliked; thus, his recordings of Mozart, whom he joked "died too late", feature his most notable departures from the score.

[5] Gould went on: I wanted ... to subject it to a Webern-like scrutiny in which its basic elements would be isolated from each other and the continuity of the theme deliberately undermined.

The idea was that each successive variation would contribute to the restoration of that continuity and, in the absorption of that task, would be less visible as an ornamental, decorative element.

[7] Critic Peter G. Davis, reviewing a number of Gould albums for The New York Times, wrote: "the loudest anathemas will undoubtedly be reserved for the Mozart record, the fourth in an ongoing project.... One critic even went so far as to brand the previous disk in this series as 'the most loathsome record ever made.'

Tempos are painfully slow, the clipped, détaché articulation violates phrase structure (and many of Mozart’s specific markings)....