CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS

Performance Wednesday, May 1, 2013 | 8 PM

Richard Goode

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Seating Chart
“It is virtually impossible to walk away from one of Richard Goode’s recitals without the sense of having gained some new insight, subtle or otherwise, into the works he played or about pianism itself,” wrote Allan Kozinn in The New York Times. By now, superlative descriptions of this eminent American pianist have become commonplace anywhere he plays.

Performers

  • Richard Goode, Piano

Program

    ALL-BEETHOVEN PROGRAM
  • Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109
  • Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110
  • Selections from Bagatelles, Op. 119
    ·· VI. Andante – Allegro
    ·· VII. Allegro, ma non troppo
    ·· VIII. Moderato cantabile
    ·· IX. Vivace moderato
    ·· X. Allegramente
    ·· XI. Andante, ma non troppo
  • Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111

Event Duration

The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.

Bios

  • Richard Goode


    Richard Goode has been hailed for music making of tremendous emotional power, depth, and expressiveness, and has been acknowledged worldwide as one of today's leading interpreters of Classical and Romantic music. In regular performances with the major orchestras, recitals in international music capitals, and acclaimed recordings, he has won a large and devoted following.

    Mr. Goode's 2012-2013 season includes recitals in some of the world's leading music centers, including engagements in London, Berlin, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, in addition to performances and master classes at major universities and conservatories in the US and abroad. As a soloist with orchestras, he performs at Carnegie Hall and on tour with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in Schumann's Piano Concerto, which he also performs with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and conductor Louis Langrée. Additionally, he joined the Tonhalle-Orchestra in Zurich for a performance of Mozart, plus Norway's Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra for Brahms's Piano Concerto No. 1.

    A native of New York, Mr. Goode studied with Elvira Szigeti and Claude Frank, with Nadia Reisenberg at Mannes College The New School For Music, and with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute of Music. He has won many prizes, including the Young Concert Artists Award, first prize in the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition, the Avery Fisher Prize, and a Grammy Award. 

    Mr. Goode, an exclusive Nonesuch artist, has made more than two dozen recordings, including Mozart solo works and concertos with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, the complete partitas by J. S. Bach, and solo and chamber works of Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Busoni, and Perle. The four recordings of Mozart concertos with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra were received with wide critical acclaim, including many "best of the year" nominations and awards. In addition, his recording of the Brahms sonatas with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman won a Grammy Award.

    Mr. Goode serves with Mitsuko Uchida as co-artistic director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Marlboro, Vermont. He is married to violinist Marcia Weinfeld; the couple lives in New York City.

    More Info

Audio

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109 (Prestissimo)
Richard Goode, Piano
Nonesuch
Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110 (Allegro molto)
Richard Goode, Piano
Nonesuch
Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111 (Maestoso: Allegro con brio ed appassionato)
Richard Goode, Piano
Nonesuch

At a Glance

Beethoven's first three piano sonatas, the Op. 2 set of 1796, followed hard on the heels of his Op. 1 piano trios, in which the 26-year-old composer boldly declared his independence as a creative artist. By the time he wrote the last of his 32 sonatas in the early 1820s, he was no longer a young lion, but an aged warrior battered by illness and emotional trauma. Finding social intercourse increasingly difficult on account of his deafness, the composer turned inward; his last sonatas—opp. 109, 110, and especially 111—are much given to soul searching. But the radiantly beneficent ending of the great C-Minor Sonata expresses consolation rather than conflict. The music teacher in Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus  described this inspired passage as "the most moving, consolatory, pathetically reconciling thing in the world. It is like having one's hair or cheek stroked, lovingly, understandingly, like a deep and silent farewell look."

On a lighter note, Beethoven seems to have been the first to apply the term bagatelle—French for "trifle"—to short, freestanding piano pieces. His first set, the Op. 33 Bagatelles of 1802, was a grab bag of seven pieces thrown together to satisfy his admiring public. Loftier ambitions are reflected in the unified conception of his six Op. 126 Bagatelles of 1824. A year earlier, he published his Op. 119, a collection of 11 pieces of varying degrees of difficulty and musical sophistication. Although several were originally intended for instructional purposes, Beethoven was incapable of pedantry. It is fascinating to hear these miniature gems alongside the late sonatas to which they form an appendage. The composer's biographer Lewis Lockwood describes the Op. 119 set as "decorative ornaments to the great jewels of opp. 110 and 111."
Program Notes

Watch


Richard Goode performs Beethoven's Bagatelle, Op. 119, VI. Andante – Allegro. Courtesy of Parlance Chamber Concerts.

This performance is part of Great Artists I, and Brilliant Beethoven - Students.

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