Speaking of the rat race, I got caught up in it myself last night, waiting over an hour at the Verizon Wireless store on Union Square for a replacement phone, causing me to miss nearly the entire first half of Richard Goode’s concert at the People’s Symphony. And, to think I didn’t even own a cell phone until 2005…(sigh)
At least what I did hear was mesmerizingly good. Goode is one of the great pianists of our time, and as co-artistic director of the famed Marlboro Music Festival with Mitsuko Uchida, he is also one of our most valued educators. (People’s Symphony manager Frank Solomon is also the administrator at Marlboro.) As a protegee of Rudolf Serkin, he is especially known for his interpretations of Mozart and Beethoven, and was the first American pianist to record the complete cycle of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas.
Beethoven was absent from the program last night, but it did include music by Bach, Mozart and Brahms. On Thursday night, Goode played this same program before a packed house in the main auditorium at Carnegie, which I’d like to think was just a dry run for last night’s main event (tickets for which cost about 5% as much.)
I arrived just as he was finishing up Brahms’ Seven Fantasien, a late effort full of impressionistic colors one doesn’t normally associate with Brahms, the avatar of "absolute" music.
Impressionism was Claude Debussy’s hallmark, and Goode offered it in full measure after the intermission with Debussy’s Preludes, Book II. These preludes, from two to nearly ten minutes in length, were composed over a three year period (1911-13), and Debussy probably never intended for them to be performed together. But, taken as a whole, they offer an enveloping soundscape of color and intensity that is all but overwhelming.
The first few preludes were deceptively simple: light and airy like madeleines, but with the rhythmic complexity of jazz. Debussy also employs the damper pedal to blur the structure of individual chords, creating an evocative, dreamlike sound. This is music right at the precipice of modernity, written at the same time Schoenberg was breaking down tonality with the Three Piano Pieces and Second String Quartet. Debussy never quite made that leap himself, but the anticipation is there: it is a window to another world.
The music gradually increased in difficulty, requiring Goode, who played from memory, to jump all over the keyboard in order to keep up with the torrent of notes. Somehow, he managed to keep it all lucid, playing with what looked like a minimum of effort. Clearly, Goode has spent a great deal of time with this music, and his mastery of it is a remarkable achievement, far more satisfying than the showy stuff of Liszt or Rachmaninoff. He acknowledged the crowd’s enthusiastic ovation with Chopin’s Nocturne No. 16 in E-flat, leaving smiles all around.
Upcoming concerts at Washington Irving High School include the Daedalus Quartet with flutist Tara O’Connor on April 28 and an unnamed group playing Dvorak and Mozart piano quartets on May 5. There is also a concert next Sunday at Town Hall featuring Jan Vogler and Louis Lortie playing cello sonatas of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Ticket info on the People’s Symphony website.