As a teenager, Gould was significantly influenced by Artur Schnabel, Rosalyn Tureck's recordings of Bach (which he called "upright, with a sense of repose and positiveness"), and the conductor Leopold Stokowski. Gould was known for having a vivid imagination. Listeners regarded his interpretations as ranging from brilliantly creative to outrightly eccentric. His pianism had great clarity and erudition, particularly in contrapuntal passages, and extraordinary control. Gould believed the piano to be "a contrapuntal instrument," and his whole approach to music was, in fact, centered in the baroque. Much of the homophony that followed he felt belongs to a less serious and less spiritual period of art.