Along with the rains that arrived over the weekend, the Bay Area experienced a small deluge of classical music performances on Saturday and Sunday. For discerning piano aficionados, though, there was really only one choice — Richard Goode’s solo recital Sunday afternoon at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Presented by Cal Performances, with a full house in attendance, the great American pianist gave the kind of splendidly refreshing performance that washes the dust from even the most oft-performed works.
Currently in his 50th year of concertizing, Goode remains one of the titans of the piano repertoire. Even among Cal Performances’ stellar lineup of piano recitals this spring — Jonathan Biss, Keith Jarrett, Peter Serkin, Leif Ove Andsnes, and Marc-Andre Hamelin are still to come — Sunday’s performance of music by Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin is likely to linger in the memory as one of the finest of the year.
Goode is a consummate performer, one whose technique is precise, alert, always eloquent. He’s also an artist of great restraint — uncommonly subtle and charmingly self-effacing. In each performance, he seems utterly inside the music at hand, affording the listener an intimate, insightful glimpse into the composer’s interior world of emotion and ideas.
That sense of intimacy was established in the first moments of Sunday’s wondrous opening performance of Mozart’s Fantasy and Sonata in C Minor, K. 475, followed, without a break, by the composer’s Sonata in C Minor, K. 457. The Fantasy is structured in five large paragraphs, played continuously, and Goode clearly savored the challenges of its rapid passagework, sudden shifts in tempo, and unexpected modulations; the phrasing of the turbulent Piu allegro yielded a world of arresting, kinetic sonorities. Still, what registered most forcefully was Goode’s ability to summon the distinctive qualities of Mozart’s thoughtful inner expression. No other pianist today seems quite as adept at articulating the composer’s light-refracting, time-suspending brilliance and his infinite variety.
No other pianist today seems quite as adept at articulating Mozart’s light-refracting, time-suspending brilliance and his infinite variety.
Goode made his shift from the sublime, mercurial Mozart to an ebullient performance of Beethoven’s Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 31, No. 3, seem a natural and necessary progression. Goode was the first American pianist to record the complete Beethoven sonatas, and his affinity for this music is simply awe-inspiring. The elegant statements of the opening Allegro movement have rarely emerged with such focus and crisp definition. Goode imparted formal coherence, and propulsive vigor, to the scherzo’s skittering juxtapositions and the menuetto’s rapid-fire effusions. The finale’s burst of ideas — at once richly poetic and fiercely forward-thinking — is enough to overcome most pianists. Goode covered its full spectrum with miraculous precision and expressive flair.
Goode’s performance, delicately phrased and rich in emotional nuance, was pure perfection.
After intermission, and in the encore, Goode turned to Chopin, offering a beguiling sampler of the composer’s solo piano works. He began with the wistful Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 55, No. 2; here, the composer’s broad harmonies suggest an alluringly blended vocal duet. Goode, unlike many of his contemporaries, resists mannerism and avoids exaggeration, and the music sounded all the more penetrating for his restraint.
The Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 39, was marked by rhythmic assertiveness and keen dynamics, and the Ballade No. 3 in A-flat Major, Op. 47, elicited tender, silken sonorities. Best of all was a grouping of Chopin waltzes — particularly the Waltz in C-sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2. Goode’s performance, delicately phrased and rich in emotional nuance, was pure perfection.
He returned for a single encore, Chopin’s C-major Mazurka, Op. 24, No. 2.