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RECITAL REVIEW
The Chameleon April 7, 2002
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By Sarah Cahill
One of Richard Goode's great strengths may be that he's such a paradox. He isn't considered a virtuoso, yet his technique dazzles as brilliantly as any superstar's. He's meticulous about detail, but from those details emerge a spontaneous performance. He can play at Davies Hall and make you feel like an audience of one. And every time you think you have him pegged as “A Schubert player” or “A Classicist,” he pulls out a transcendent rendition of Debussy or Bach or Ives.
Here's another paradox: Richard Goode may be a pianist, but he's actually playing a multitude of instruments. I'm not sure how he does it, but he conjures up string quartets, singers, wind instruments, and even brass. In Schubert sonatas especially he weighs each voice as if four strings are in conversation. In his Davies recital on Tuesday night, he spun out one rapturous melody in the second movement of Mozart's Sonata in F major, K. 533/494, with the phrasing of a bel canto singer, and later, a French horn suddenly boomed forth with a three-note motif. He is uncompromising about sound; a consummate illusionist, he never just “plays” the piano.
Take the opening of Beethoven's Sonata op. 81a, known as “Les Adieux.” Goode invests those three opening chords with the full significance of the farewell — you hear the “Le-be-wohl” syllables as unimaginably sad. The third movement's opening comes as a shock, with a clatter of radical passagework. Goode has a way of bringing out all kinds of astonishing originality, like the last few pages of “Les Adieux's” first movement and the last few pages of the first movement of Schubert's A major Sonata D. 959, and making them absolutely cohesive at the same time. Awe is always in the air, both ours and his own. Even a seemingly insignificant section, like the Trio of the Schubert Sonata's third movement, packed hair-raising violence into its brief measures.
Four Debussy Preludes were equally fresh, volatile, and clearly conceived. Goode nailed every little marking, every ppp and pppp, every accent and hairpin crescendo; and yet risk-taking impulsiveness drove “La danse de Puck,” and in “La puerta del vino” he perfectly captured Debussy's “brusque opposition of extreme violence and passionate sweetness.” Think how many times Goode is playing the same program on tour; how many times he's played the same Schubert and Beethoven sonatas that he recorded years ago. He performs the same pieces year after year, but always gives his audiences a vivid interpretation, and never goes on automatic pilot. With most touring pianists, you get the feeling some time during a recital that, in the words of Emerson, their playing “comes out of the memory, and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is usual, and not at what is necessary and eternal.” There is hardly a moment in Goode's playing that isn't necessary and eternal. We Goodeheads have heard multiple versions of his Schubert A major Sonata here in the Bay Area, but continue to feel transformed when he plays it. How many pianists can play that endless meandering last movement and leave you begging for more? In concert after concert, he shows us what we can aspire to be. (Sarah Cahill is a pianist and host of a weekly music program called "Then & Now" on KALW. She can also be found at www.sarahcahill.com) ©2002 Sarah Cahill, all rights reserved |
