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RECITAL REVIEW
March 21, 2004
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By Sarah Cahill
In his annual visits to the Bay Area, Richard Goode continues to be an inspiration.
Hearing him, after months of recitals by other pianists, is like going from black and white
to color. Perhaps of all living pianists, one can learn the most from listening to him: his
integrity, his tone, his probing attention to detail, his absolute respect for the score. He
opens new worlds.
Goode often repeats repertoire in his visits. His Bay Area audiences have heard his
Beethoven Bagatelles, his Schubert Sonatas, his Chopin Ballades. But they always sound
fresh, because he is constantly in a process of exploration. Just as Schnabel observed that
a great piece of music can never be mastered, Goode's approach is one of continual
discovery. Even though he has analyzed and exhaustively studied (and memorized) each
piece he plays, he still allows for its mystery. His scholarship and research energize the
music and make it live.
At half an hour long, Schubert's A minor Sonata D. 845 can seem interminable. Goode is
probably the only pianist who makes you wish Schubert's sonatas would never end. He
starts us on the winding path, searching with us but never faltering in his conviction of its
wonders. He uncovers them one by one. A melancholy melody to begin; then a series of
cushioned chords. How does he create that effect, with a mechanism of hammers and
strings? How does he infuse the piece with such kaleidoscopic variety, conjuring up a
dozen different instruments? The piano seems to have no limits in his hands.
Schubert's second movement opens with a tiny figure, a staccato chord followed by a held one. Most pianists perform this in a mincing way, but Goode plays not a jumpy staccato but rather a gentle sequence of pressure and release. There is something very optimistic about his approach: it trusts the music to reveal itself naturally. He doesn't try to dress up Schubert's simple line, he just presents it as it is. One feels an absence of "interpretation," certainly an absence of ego. It just flows forth with ease and grace. This sonata can seem fragmented, veering off into contrary directions, but Goode makes it work, partly because he allows it to not make sense. Volatility and mood swings are part of life, he seems to be saying, so they can come and go. Goode is so much in the tradition of his teachers, Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski, and so strongly associated with Beethoven and Schubert, that one forgets just what a virtuoso he can be. A Chopin set of four Mazurkas, a Nocturne, and the Ballade No. 1 displayed brilliant passagework, pyrotechnics, and further illumination. Chopin extends a phrase marking over a vast stretch of melody in the Nocturne in E-flat major, op. 55 no. 2, and Goode makes it last that long, takes a breath, and starts another protracted phrase. He finds the most musical purpose for each marking in the score. Even the most awkward ornaments and trills were as free and easy as speech. Goode gave a subtle reading of Janácek's two-movement Sonata (I.X. 1905), "In the Street," imbuing the dissonant disorder of the first movement with a clatter of light and shadow. In the second movement, he balanced the voicing of chords so that with his thumb, in the tenor line, he added a note of poignancy to the repeated figure. Beethoven's Six Bagatelles, op. 126, were little microcosms, each full of surprising contrasts, sudden silences and explosions, and gentle dances. After a standing ovation, Goode played three encores for the packed house. Thousands of us were at Davies Hall, but he made each of us feel that we were his private audience of one.
(Sarah Cahill is a pianist and critic who hosts a music program called
"Then & Now" on KALW 91.7 FM every Sunday night from 8 to 10 pm. Her website is
www.sarahcahill.com.)
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Richard Goode