Richard Goode - Beethoven, 2 June 2013

Wigmore Hall

Piano Sonata no.30 in E major, op.109

Piano Sonata no.31 in A-flat major, op.110
Bagatelles, op.119, nos 6-11
Piano Sonata no.32 in C minor, op.111

Richard Goode (piano)

 

Last year I was fortunate enough to hear Maurizio Pollini play the final three Beethoven sonatas, both in London and in Salzburg. Richard Goode, adding five of the op.119 Bagatelles, offered, if not quite the white heat of Pollini, then musical satisfaction of a degree it is a privilege to hear.

 

The E major sonata, op.109 opened with clarity that would be a hallmark of Goode’s performance throughout: not clarity for its own sake, but at the service of delineating and indeed generating Beethoven’s forms. Married to a tonal richness that at times put me in mind of a Bösendorfer, sound and touch simply seemed ‘right’. The final slow movement proved as fine an example of inevitably ‘following on’ from the concentration of the first two movements as one could hope for. That Gluckian ‘noble simplicity’ so necessary to any performance of this movement was an abiding characteristic, albeit born of almost immeasurably more complex musical means. The balance, or rather dialectic, between those two opposing forces is the stuff of Beethoven’s music, here and in so many instances; such was how it sounded under Goode’s stewardship.

 

As Misha Donat put it in his programme note, ‘If for Beethoven E major was a serenely radiant key, then A flat major was his “soft” key’. That shone through in Goode’s performance, though the sublimity of Beethoven’s utterances remained. The first movement’s Romanticism came more strongly to the fore than is often the case; it may be in sonata form, but it took upon itself elements of the ‘character piece’, the tensions often apparent in Beethoven’s sonata writing, if not suspended, then elevated into a more seraphic realm. A splendidly flexible, though always coherent, account of the ‘Allegro molto’ scherzo gave way to a finely-judged balance between aria and fugue in the finale. Disruption was not so much the order of the day as it might have been in Pollini’s radically modernist hands; but the teasing out of sometimes unexpected kinship between the two groups of material brought its own rewards. (In practice, of course, a performance will adopt elements of both approaches, but overall tendencies tend to define one’s response.)

 

The final six op.119 Bagatelles offered not respite, but an intensification of their own. Typically described as ‘chips from the master’s workbench,’ they are far more than that: development is certainly not eschewed, yet concentration of utterance both in work and in Goode’s performance, ensured that they took upon themselves a crystalline, enigmatic quality of utterance not so very distant from Webern. Trills, arpeggios, syncopations: they are familiar from Beethoven’s more extended late music, yet they sound almost as if new material. Distillation is the key here, and so it was in performance, seemingly completed before it had begun.

 

Beethoven’s C minor daemon returned with a vengeance in the first movement of the op.111 sonata, as if to remind us that searing drama stands as much at the heart of his late music as that of his ‘middle’ and indeed ‘early’ periods – and indeed to deconstruct that periodisation, both necessary and questionable. The sense of development Goode brought to the entire movement put me in mind of an extraordinary performance I heard a few years ago from Daniel Barenboim; if Goode were more measured in his general ‘voice’, Beethoven’s spirit, anything but placid, nevertheless spoke in similar tones. The second movement variations emerged as release, but also as complementary, that fine sense of balance to which I have referred above again apparent in Goode’s ability both to maintain overall line and direction and yet to impart ‘character’, again in an almost Romantic, Schumannesque, sense, to individual variations. Wisdom has clearly been earned through lengthy consideration of these miraculous scores; there could be little doubt that this Wigmore Hall audience was nourished, intellectually and spiritually, by its communication.

Richard Goode - Schumann and Chopin, 12 February 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Schumann – Kinderszenen, op.15
Kreisleriana, op.16
Chopin – Nocturne in E-flat major, op.55 no.2
Scherzo no.3 in C-sharp minor, op.39
Waltzes: op.64 no.3 in A-flat major, op.64 no.2 in C sharp minor, op.34 no.3 in F major
Ballade no.3 in A-flat major, op.47


Richard Goode’s contribution to the Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series offered almost unalloyed delight. Indeed, I should struggle – and see no reason why I ought to struggle – to find anything about which even to quibble from the first half, devoted to Schumann. The first piece of Kinderszenen welcomed us in, as if the welcome came directly – which, in a way, it did – from a wise and kindly storyteller. How was this accomplished, both here and later in the work? Through imagination, certainly, but also through well-nigh perfect weighting of every chord, and communication of the connections between every note. Memories of and sympathy towards childhood permeated performance and score alike. Pieces such as ‘Bittendes Kind’ and ‘Gluckes genug’ were delectable, thanks to Goode’s irreproachable tonal understanding. Voice-leading sounded impeccably natural, whilst judicious rubato made points without underlining. It is a cliché, doubtless, but ‘Träumerei’ proved the true, still centre to the work, not least to a marriage of pellucid, Murray Perahia-like tone with harmonic grounding that put me in mind of Wilhelm Kempff. Irresistible rhythmic impetus – and that includes harmonic rhythm – brought ‘Ritter von Steckenpferd’ to life. Goode’s placing of the opening chords in ‘Der Dichter spricht’ and his spinning of the line emerging therefrom brought a sense, despite horrendous bronchial contributions from sections of the audience, of magical reverie with direction. Sadly, some of the performance was blighted by noise from outside the hall: what sounded like drumming, at one point. But it is testimony to Goode’s performance that it rose above such distractions.

Kreisleriana opened with a movement by turns tempestuous and dreamily poetic, Florestan and Eusebius setting the scene for the work as a whole. The two ensuing intermezzi evoked a similar, continued contrast and competition, which yet retained common poetic ground. Scales were transmuted into something so much more in the third movement, whilst the fifth imparted a fine sense of a snapshot, neither begun nor completed, but rather revealed to us for a while. The opening of the final movement flickered like Schubert’s Irrlicht, though was always underpinned by absolute rhythmic security. Its passionate central section was striking for its unforced sincerity: that both of pianist and composer.

The Chopin works performed in the second half were different from those previously advertised (the E major Nocturne, op.62 no.2, and the third sonata). There was little to regret, though. The opening Nocturne, op.55 no.2, presented not an old world Chopin, but one whose sparkle, not least in the trills, looked forward to Debussy and Ravel. Dramatic rhetoric in the opening of the third Scherzo made me eager to hear Goode in Liszt; there was certainly a touch of Mephistopheles here, and the final climax proved as diabolical as anything in Liszt’s own music. One should not forget, though, the delicacy with which Goode made Chopin’s decoration sing: not ‘mere’ decoration, but true, melodic inspiration. The two op.64 waltzes performed (nos 2 and 3) charmed without skating over the very real depths to be found here, especially the yearning of the C-sharp minor waltz. For me, the only disappointment was the A-flat Ballade. Its fluency impressed, but here, and only here, I sensed that there was more to the music than was being revealed on the present occasion. Perhaps I have been listening too often to the ever- rigorous Maurizio Pollini.

LSO/Davis - Mozart and Berlioz, 22 February 2009

Barbican Hall

Mozart – Piano concerto no.18 in B-flat major, KV 456
Berlioz – Te Deum

Richard Goode (piano)
Colin Lee (tenor)
London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)

This, rather to my surprise, was chamber-scale Mozart, with only eight first violins and the other strings scaled down accordingly. Whether this corresponded to the wishes of Sir Colin Davis, Richard Goode, or both, I can only surmise. It is not that, save for an occasional thinness of string tone, there was anything wrong with the LSO’s performance, far from it. But the balances and crisp tonal quality were at times more reminiscent of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Sir Neville Marriner than of Sir Colin’s typically more full-blooded approach. That said, there were moments of sheer magic, such as the ineffably beautiful Harmoniemusik of the Andante, when it was abundantly clear who wielded the baton. Goode proved an exquisite Mozartian. Not only were there some truly melting solo passages; his structural command and elucidation were second to none. For instance, he emphasised, through colouring and discreet ornamentation, yet without didacticism, that the so-called double exposition of the first movement is better understood in terms of ritornello form, albeit refreshed by the experience of newer sonata forms. Indeed, whether as soloist or chamber musician, Goode shone throughout. Davis’s operatic experience was apparent in the opening tutti of the slow movement. This was very much a minor-key scena; I thought immediately of the Countess. Goode’s entry resembled that of an intelligent singer, whilst lacking nothing in his pianism. The chromatic harmonies were heart-rending yet never vulgarised. This is Mozartian variation form at its most perfect – and for once, it sounded so. The coda brought an almost Gluckian note of restrained, noble tragedy. High spirits surfaced in the hunting finale, but this is Mozart, not Haydn, so the musicians ensured through careful shading that the good humour was not untroubled – and not only in the minor-mode episode that looks forward to the D minor concerto, KV 466. Mozart can be even sadder in a major key than a minor key, as Davis and Goode are well aware. This was a distinguished performance, if not quite what I had expected.

Davis is as renowned for his Berlioz as his Mozart. Expectations were therefore as high for the Te Deum as for the concerto; I am glad to report that they were amply fulfilled. There is something very curious about this work. One can tell that Berlioz clearly did not believe a word of the text. Instead, he seems to be attempting a ceremonial piece for the civil religion of the Rousseuvian Enlightenment – or the Revolution. There is no straining to believe, as in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis; rather, the hallowed canticle becomes a vehicle for something distanced and secular. There was quite rightly no piety, cloying or otherwise, to this performance; it was admirably straightforward in its rejoicing.

The opening hymn was exultant, the brass superlative here and throughout. Far from sounding overloaded, the Barbican Hall’s acoustic sounded fulfilled in the wonderful, awe-inspiring mass of instrumental and choral sound that enveloped us. The four pairs of cymbals at the end of the ‘Tibi omnes’ were a sight and a sound at which to marvel. There were more delicate moments too, of course, such as the ravishing woodwind evoking the angels earlier in that hymn, or the combination of organ and pizzicato strings, soon joined by positively Mendelssohnian woodwind, in the opening to the prayer, ‘Dignare, domine’. The organ sounded, as it should, from behind the audience and was clearly, given Davis’s signals behind himself, being played there too. However, some of the softer registrations betrayed a little too clearly the instrument's electronic nature. Colins Lee and Davis imparted an unexaggerated sense of the operatic to the prayer, ‘Te ergo quaesumus’. One could readily imagine the melody and accompaniment to have been extracted from Benvenuto Cellini. The female voices of the London Symphony Chorus were on very good form for their interventions here. Indeed, the choral singing was generally of a very high standard, my only cavil being that, occasionally when singing more softly, some of the men sounded, sad to say, a little old. However, the boys of Eltham College sounded glorious in the final ‘Judex crederis’. How could one ever be confounded, as the text might have us fear, in the presence of so jubilant a peroration? One could almost hear the bells pealing, even though they are nowhere to be found in the orchestra. The great climax was almost deafening, but thrilling in the best sense. This will be the latest work to join Davis’s Berlioz series for LSO Live. Such a performance certainly merits preservation, even in the face of fierce recorded competition from Sir Colin himself.

Richard Goode and Jonathan Biss, piano recital, 31 May 2008

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Schubert – Allegro in A minor for piano duet, D.947, ‘Lebensstürme’
Schumann-Debussy – Six Etudes en forme de canon, Op.56, for two pianos
Beethoven – Grosse Fuge in B flat, Op. 134, arr. by the composer for piano duet (but performed on two pianos)
Stravinsky – Agon, arr. by the composer for two pianos
Debussy – En blanc et noir, for two pianos

Richard Goode (piano)
Jonathan Biss (piano)

What a delightful choice for Richard Goode to conclude his Southbank Centre residency! It is sometimes said that piano duets are more players’ than audiences’ music, but try telling that to anyone who cares for Schubert. (Is there anyone who does not?) In any case, music written for four hands on two pianos presents a different genre, although again hardly a fashionable one. However, the choice of his fellow pianist was more important still than the variety of concert. Quoted in the programme, Goode disarmingly confessed that the reason for the latter was simply that he wanted to play with Jonathan Biss: quite an accolade for the young American pianist, although amply warranted. The two pianists formed a considerable partnership, in which it was often difficult if not impossible to disentangle their respective contributions.

Schubert’s Allegro in A minor received an impassioned reading, especially for the opening theme and its reprises; its nickname, ‘Lebensstürme’, seemed highly appropriate. The form was clearly delineated: important in itself and for appreciation of the work’s emotional course. Themes passed flawlessly between the four hands. The typically Schubertian cross-rhythms (threes against fours) were rightly not adjusted so as to lose their edge. When it came to the coda, the minor-key desolation was almost Mozartian. This was a performance of great depth, considerably more involving than the previous week’s Fifth Symphony from Sir Colin Davis and the LSO.

Debussy’s arrangement of Schumann’s canons for pedal-piano was fascinating, inhabiting a shifting ground somewhere between Bach and Debussy: as it happens, not a bad way to characterise Schumann’s music. I was also put in mind of Mozart’s piano works in the ‘Baroque style’ and Schumann’s editions of Bach’s sonatas and partitas for solo violin (with piano ‘additional accompaniments’). Debussy’s division of the canonical lines between the two pianos was made decisively to tell, so that the counterpoint emerged with great, yet never un-Romantic clarity. Chopinesque nostalgia was to be heard to great effect in the second, marked Avec beaucoup d’expression; the two-piano texture heightened the import of its concluding chromaticism. The fourth, Expressivo–Un peu plus mouvementé, was perhaps the most Romantic in character and writing; it received a duly yet never excessively passionate reading. Bach seemed distant here and Schumann himself most readily present; inspiration from the former composer in this canon was the most assimilated and transformed. (It is perhaps no coincidence that Schumann’s canonical writing is less strict here than in some of the other pieces.) The rhythmic bounce given to the fifth canon, Pas trop vite, was infectious. There was a true sense of expansive culmination in the Adagio final canon, which – rather to my surprise – put me briefly in mind of Elgar. This was not merely the sixth piece, but the final movement in a six-movement work. The only drawback was the return with a vengeance of Goode’s curiously tuneless ‘singing’: one can cope, but it is undeniably distracting.

Beethoven’s own transcription of the Grosse Fuge ought to be more often performed. If the final ounce of the original’s strain – near-impossibility? – is absent, then this is really only a matter of degree. I am not sure why it was performed on two pianos; perhaps it was simply in order to avoid a second change-over, although this could readily have been accommodated, given that the performers left the stage after the Schumann canons. It is a very minor point, but I wonder whether some of that strain would have returned with a performance on one instrument. In any case, the playing was of such impressive unanimity that one might often have been forgiven for hearing but the one piano. Having heard the Op.111 sonata from Krystian Zimerman earlier in the week, I was reminded once again of how much more radical Beethoven’s writing is in this fugue even than that of the late piano sonatas. The opening Allegro was brusquely vehement, appearing to presage almost the whole gamut of twentieth-century composition. Then, the second section brought to mind the piano writing of the late Bagatelles and, in its characteristic sublimity, the Ninth Symphony and the Missa Solemnis. Its G-flat major tonality – one of the most enjoyable keys in which to play on the piano, in sharp contrast to nasty F-sharp major – was the perfect setting for Beethoven’s rapt lyricism. Goode’s grunting was more distracting here than it would be in the Allegro molto e con brio, where the sense of such strenuous effort was not entirely out of place. Indeed, this third section boasted an awe-inspiring dialectic between quixotic play and extreme intellectual strenuousness. On the technical side, co-ordination of the trills was impressive, but there was never any question of beauty for its own sake, as had sometimes been the case in the Zimerman Beethoven performance referred to above. Occasionally, I thought that Beethoven’s silences might profitably have been slightly extended, but this was my only cavil, and a minor one at that. The coda was rightly made both to perform its integrative function and also not quite to succeed in doing so, the music proving uncontainable within its form; the Romantics did not err completely in understanding Beethoven as having burst the constraints of Classical – or in this case, quasi-Baroque – form. Both pianists looked appropriately exhausted at the conclusion to this fine performance.

‘Stravinsky’s Agon I’m somewhat obsessed with,’ Goode confided in the programme interview: ‘it’s invigorating and wonderful. It’s one of the most New York things Stravinsky ever write: you can hear the traffic!’ We certainly could during this performance, above all during the Pas-de-Quatre and its reprise in the Coda. The metrical tightness with which Stravinsky’s rhythmic cells were projected was all one might have asked for; the several ostinati were especially well served in this regard. An entirely apt impression of total control evoked that quality, common to the composer’s entire œuvre, in the score. It was, moreover, commendably apparent throughout that these were dance numbers. I missed the orchestral colours – not least the mandolin – and our pianists could not entirely disguise the fact that Stravinsky had arranged the work for rehearsal purposes rather than as a creative re-imagining, yet the losses were not so great as one might have expected. The one occasion when orchestral colour remained was during the Bransle Gay: however, whilst it was fun to see Biss play the castanets rather than the piano this number, his slightly diffident performance suggests that he should keep the day job. A more implacable performance of its 3/8 metre would have allowed the irregular quintuple and septuple semiquaver piano variants to register more bitingly, although Goode projected the grace-note rhythm here with great style. The spirit of Webern truly enters the score during its second half (roughly) and it is sad to note that some quarters of the audience became a little restless. This could not, however, negate the extraordinary and so-very-typical achievement of Stravinsky in creating a Rameau-meets-Webern score that yet sounds only like Stravinsky.

As in Goode’s February solo recital, the Debussy here was painted with primary colours, with little hint of impressionist haze. The technical challenges of En blanc et noir are perhaps more audibly apparent than during the other works, but they were all despatched with aplomb, and musical aplomb at that. Biss may have exhibited a slightly brighter tone than Goode, but this may simply have reflected the distribution of parts; the way in which four hands played as one was far more remarkable than any occasional slightest differences of character. The slow second piece, prefaced in the score by François Villon’s Ballade contre les ennemis de la France, successfully evoked both the spirit of old France and the horrors of the battlefield: Ein’ feste Burg had an implacable onward tread. I do not care for Debussy’s nationalism here, but it would do no one any good to ignore it. The third movement was a true scherzando, all the more remarkable given the participation of two pianists and two instruments. There was ample virtuosity on display, not least in the treacherous repeated notes, yet it was always at the service of the music.

After this triumphant performance, Goode and Biss reverted to one piano, four hands, for an encore: Schumann’s Abendlied. It proved the perfect conclusion to a splendid recital: achingly beautiful and so unambiguously characteristic of the composer (far more so than the earlier canons). The harmonies tugged the heartstrings in a way unique to Schumann, and left this listener wishing for more.

Richard Goode, piano recital, 27 February 2008

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Bach – Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 870
Bach – French Suite no.3 in B minor, BWV 814
Chopin – Mazurka in C, Op.24 no.2
Chopin – Mazurka in G, Op.50 no.1
Chopin – Mazurka in E minor, Op.41 no.2
Chopin – Mazurka in B minor, Op.33 no.4
Chopin – Impromptu in F sharp major, Op.36
Mozart – Rondo in A minor, KV 511
Chopin – Scherzo no.4 in E major, Op.54
Debussy – Etude no.11: ‘Pour les Arpèges composés’
Debussy – Etude no.5: ‘Pour les Octaves’
Chopin – Nocturne in C minor, Op.48 no.1
Chopin – Nocturne in B major, Op.62 no.1
Chopin – Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op.44

Richard Goode (piano)

Richard Goode opened his Queen Elizabeth Hall recital, ‘Homage to Chopin’, with some of the best Bach playing I have heard. He took full advantage of the modern piano without ever straying into merely ‘pianistic’ vulgarity. The C major Prelude and Fugue from Book II of the ‘Forty-eight’ was a perfect curtain-raiser, functioning rather like an overture in an orchestral programme. Bach’s counterpoint was wonderfully clear throughout, yet never at the expense of the manifold harmonic implications of the score. ‘Implications’ seems an especially appropriate word for the Prelude, with its parts that grow into chords: Goode’s mastery of the numerous held notes on which this depends was something quite rare, in every sense. So was the splendidly vocal quality to his part-playing, both in the Prelude and in the little three-part fugue. To this was added, in the third French Suite, a markedly orchestral sense. Goode’s characterisation of individual lines was so apt that one could imagine this part being allotted to a flute, that to a ’cello. Moreover, he showed a rhythmic security, attentive to the harmonic implications of the work’s rhythms, characteristic of the best performances of the Orchestral Suites: Klemperer or Karl Richter, for example. This was never at the expense of the piano’s unique qualities, however; far from it. The hushed return of the fifth movement’s Menuet, for example, was quite magical in purely instrumental terms.

Chopin also adored Mozart, and the Rondo in A minor, perhaps Mozart’s single greatest work for solo piano, is more than suggestive of why. Some of its highly Romantic piano writing clearly looks forward to Chopin and even beyond. The music is often highly chromatic, as is the melodic line of the rondo theme, which suggests a vast range of harmonic possibilities, as in Bach. Textures are more complex than is often the case in the sonatas. Yet I did not feel that Goode responded strongly enough to these rewarding although admittedly treacherous possibilities. Whilst his Mozart was thankfully not of the ‘Dresden china’ persuasion, it still felt somewhat inhibited, despite marvellous incidental beauties, such as the perfectly articulated left hand staccato runs. The arrival of the A major episode, which should be a moment of utopian beauty, seemed oddly matter-of-fact. And where Mozart really goes for the jugular, at the beginning of the coda, Goode seemed far more wary of exploiting his modern instrument than he had in the Bach works.

Debussy’s celebrated line, that ‘Chopin is the greatest of them all, for through the piano he discovered everything,’ was quoted in the programme. One of Chopin’s greatest disciples was represented by two Etudes. The first, ‘Pour les Arpèges composés’, suffered from sounding excessively like a homage to Chopin. There was a full-blooded Romanticism, occasionally verging upon the heavy-handed, to its Scherzandere middle section, which, although it might have made sense in terms of the programme, did not really work in practice. ‘Pour les Octaves’, however, was marvellous, as full of suggestive wit as post-impressionistic ambiguity. Goode’s touch was fully equal here to whatever Debussy demanded. The composer’s marking, ‘Joyeux et emporté, librement rythmé,’ is an apt summation of Goode’s performance.

Chopin himself was well served. The selection of Mazurkas was masterfully characterised, both as a group and in terms of the individual character of the pieces. As with the Bach suite, Goode exhibited great sensitivity to the difficult balancing act between the dance origins of the works and their new life as instrumental pieces. Thus the rhythms danced and the progressions were suitably accented, not least the stomping middle section of Op.24 no.2, but this was accomplished through pianistic re-creation rather than slavish imitation. The painful sadness of Op. 33 no.4, marked Mesto, shone through as an exile’s longing for his homeland and his pain at that homeland’s suffering. At the same time, its dancing qualities ensured that it never descended into mawkishness. The larger pieces – the F sharp major Impromptu, the E major Scherzo, and the final F sharp minor Polonaise – received typically thoughtful performances. Effortless bravura is not Goode’s way, though this in no way implies any shortcomings in his technique. However, despite the thoroughly musical virtues of these performances, they could occasionally sound a little wanting in charm, when compared to the greatest Chopin players. Voice-leading, for instance, was for the most part carefully handled, with some revelations concerning inner parts; but the twinkle in the eye with which, say, Shura Cherkassky might have accomplished some such devilish feat was not to be seen (or heard, should that be possible). That said, the quasi-orchestral characterisation familiar from Goode’s Bach playing made a few appearances in his Chopin, and to equally good effect.

This was also apparent in the two selected Nocturnes, concerning whose performance I had no reservations whatsoever, at least after a slightly underwhelming opening to the great C minor Nocturne, Op.48 no.1. It is marked mezza voce, but this should not preclude, indeed it should encourage, a truly aristocratic poise. Thereafter, however, the growth of tension was unremitting, which owed a great deal to Goode’s understanding and projection of the underlying harmonic progression. The Doppio movimento section veritably seethed, all the more in retrospect, following the magical calming of the waves at the concluding diminuendo e rallentando. In the B major Nocturne, Op. 62 no.1, Goode’s expertise in part-leading came fully to the fore; here was the magic that was sometimes lacking in the larger Chopin works. There was magic too, in the purely pianistic roulades, spun with an almost Mendelssohnian gossamer. It was fitting that for his encore, Goode treated us to another Nocturne, that in E flat, Op. 55 no.2, whose fine performance reminded us of the virtues of its predecessors.