CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Richard Goode

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 at 8:00 PM

Richard Goode, Piano

BACH Prelude and Fugue in G Minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, BWV 885
BACH French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816
CHOPIN Mazurka in C Major, Op. 56, No. 2
CHOPIN Mazurka in E Major, Op. 6, No. 3
CHOPIN Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 7, No. 2
CHOPIN Mazurka in A-flat Major, Op. 7, No. 4
CHOPIN Mazurka in C Minor, Op. 56, No. 3
CHOPIN Nocturne in F-sharp Major, Op. 15, No. 2
CHOPIN Scherzo No. 3
CHOPIN Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60
BACH Prelude and Fugue in C Major from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, BWV 870
BACH Prelude and Fugue in E Major from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, BWV 878
BACH Prelude and Fugue in A Minor from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, BWV 889
CHOPIN Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2
CHOPIN Waltz in C-sharp Minor, Op. 64, No. 2
CHOPIN Waltz in A-flat Major, Op. 64, No. 3
CHOPIN Waltz in F Major, Op. 34, No. 3
CHOPIN Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat Major, Op. 61

Encores:
CHOPIN Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2
BACH Sarabande from Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major, BWV 825

Program Notes:

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
Preludes and Fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II; French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816

The title page of The Well-Tempered Clavier makes its design and purpose plain: The 24 preludes and fugues (48 between the two books, the second having been compiled and published in the late 1730s or early 1740s) move through “all the tones and semitones” and are intended “for the use and improvement of musical youth eager to learn, and for the particular delight of those already skilled in this discipline.” Those “tones and semitones” are the 24 major and minor keys in the tonal system of Western music: Bach composed a prelude and fugue for each key to cover the full tonal spectrum. In terms of their level of difficulty, the pieces remain within reach of accomplished amateurs while posing sufficient technical and musical challenges to engage even the most seasoned artist.

If the title page answers some basic questions, however, the title itself raises others. To wit: What is meant by “clavier”? And what is a well-tempered one?

“Well tempered” refers to a tuning system, one that would accommodate all 24 keys. As musicologist David Ledbetter explains, well tempered “means no more than a tuning in which it is possible to play tolerably in all keys.” Whole books (long books, often involving a fair amount of math) have been written about tuning in general and Bach’s in particular. Basically, the problem is that Western art music isn’t math, and when we insist on a 12-note division of the octave, the long-division of tuning can leave a nettlesome remainder. When all of the intervals are tuned in perfect ratios, there’s a nasty bit left over known as a “comma.” Temperaments distribute this comma by slightly mistuning certain notes; this renders many intervals useable but leaves others as “Wolf tones,” wickedly dissonant intervals where a sweetly consonant one should be. Different temperaments make different choices about how to distribute acoustically perfect notes and imperfect ones; tuning systems broker compromises between the physics of sound and the musical language of Western culture.

Today’s pianos are invariably tuned in “equal temperament”: every interval is off from its ideal ratio by exactly the same amount to ensure an equal division of the octave into 12 parts. Although imperfect in terms of ratios, this tuning makes many things possible—notably, the infinitely free-ranging chromatic harmony essential to 19th-century piano music by composers like Chopin. We don’t really know what tuning Bach himself used for the preludes and fugues, but clearly it was sufficiently tempered to make every key useable (although, it should be noted, probably not identical sounding as in true equal temperament).

And what was well tempered? “Clavier” is a catch-all term, so the exact nature of the instrument remains unclear. Bach knew the organ, the harpsichord, the Lautenwerk (a gut-stung harpsichord meant to sound like a lute), and the still relatively recent pianoforte (distinguished from the harpsichord by having strings struck by hammers rather than plucked). As Ledbetter notes in his study of The Well-Tempered Clavier, “whatever Bach’s original intention, there was certainly a tradition in the later 18th century of playing the 48 on the organ.” Indeed, the C-major opening prelude of Book II presents a texture typical of organ music with a pedal point below (which, on the organ, would literally be a pedal pressed and held by the performer’s foot) and busy figuration above, creating a dense thicket of three voices.

Bach’s French Suites (there are six in all) were certainly written for the harpsichord, but the title was likely not his own and should not be taken to mean much in terms of style or design. Nevertheless, the music possesses a certain Gallic elegance, a legacy of the origin in the French court of the various dances that make up the suite.

The dances derive from types originally choreographed on stage and later performed in formal balls at the highest levels of French society in the middle and late 17th century. By the time Bach and his contemporaries were routinely using them as abstract instrumental works, they had lost most of their direct connection to choreography and dance steps. Instead, they became stylized templates: each kind of dance (allemande, courante, gigue, and so on) followed conventions of tempo, meter (the organization of beats into groups), rhythm (particular patterns of shorts and longs), phrase structure (how musical thoughts are put together), texture (how many musical lines, relating to each other in particular ways), and even formal organization (typically two sections repeated in the pattern AABB). The challenge to the composer was to show what could be done afresh with familiar and stylized conventions, in the invention of interesting and promising musical ideas and their working out within the confines of the type.


FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN (1810–1849)
Five Mazurkas; Nocturne in F-sharp Major, Op. 15, No. 2; Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 39; Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60

Frédéric Chopin was a child of material and cultural comforts, delicate constitution, and prodigious gifts; an exceptional pianist from a solidly middle-class background, he charmed the best of Polish society yet longed to explore the world outside Warsaw. After graduating from high school in 1830, Chopin traveled to Vienna, but the city proved inhospitable—through no fault of his own. He arrived a week after the November uprising in Warsaw, a violent challenge to Russian Imperial authority that had Austria siding with Russia against the Poles. With no hope of promoting himself or his music, Chopin grew homesick. “I curse the moment of my departure,” he wrote to a friend. His nostalgia for Poland colored his compositions: while in Vienna, he wrote two sets of mazurkas, a Polish folk dance in triple meter with a heavy accent on the second or third beats (unlike a waltz, also in three beats but emphasizing the first) as well as polonaises, another typical Polish dance in triple meter. In 1831, he moved to Paris, where he found himself in demand socially as well as professionally, teaching, composing, and performing in elite salons. There he met fellow pianist-composer Franz Liszt; his mistress, the Countess Marie d’Agoult; and Georges Sand, to whom Chopin would dedicate himself as a romantic partner.

In his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Chopin, musicologist Jim Samson tackles three myths of Chopin: Chopin the salon composer, the “slavonic” composer, and the romantic composer. Looking through these lenses, we see a distorted image of his life and music. True, Chopin eschewed the large public concert (Liszt’s preferred venue) for the small salon. But the seemingly confined setting did not limit his virtuosity or dramatic expression. “His achievement,” Samson writes, “was to elevate some of its traditions to unsuspected creative heights, where they might yield nothing in stature to more epic and prestigious genres.” Miniatures like the mazurkas, nocturnes, and waltzes concentrate (rather than dilute) the powerful pianism evident in such larger works as the ballades and Polanaise-fantasie.

There is no doubt Chopin drew upon native Polish traditions, including the mazurka, a Mazovian folk dance, and stately polonaise. Yet he was just as invested in and influenced by Italian opera, translating the bel canto style of melodic, long-breathed singing into sinewy, expansive melodies at the keyboard.

And while Chopin’s music obviously exudes passion, it is all too easy to slap the label of “Romantic” on the composer, whose life seems similarly stormy and dramatic. His embittered lover George Sand spilled the secrets of their relationship in her novel Lucrezia Floriani (1846) in terms flattering to herself but not to him. She described Chopin as “supercilious, haughty, precious, and distant,” prone to “sulking in a pathetic manner”—the very portrait of the otherworldly artist. Slightly boned, fragile, slim, and pale, Chopin died of the quintessential Romantic ailment: He coughed himself to death with consumption. Yet for all these Romantic resonances, his music reveals a commitment to Classical principles of grace, economy, and order. Chopin rejected “over-exuberant or sentimental types of thought,” Samson observes, foreswearing descriptive narratives in his music, and esteemed the work of Bach, Handel, and Mozart.

Ironically for a composer whose pieces have always met with success on the grandest of stages, Chopin despised public performance. “The crowd intimidates me,” he confessed to Liszt, “and I feel asphyxiated by its eager breath, paralyzed by its inquisitive stare, silenced by its alien faces.” Such audacious works as the Polonaise-fantaisie thus display a bravura the composer did not himself possess.

—Elizabeth Bergman

Elizabeth Bergman earned her PhD in musicology from Yale University, and has authored numerous award-winning books and articles. She is the Director of the Honors Program at Baruch College.


© 2009 The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Richard Goode, Piano
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 major orchestras, recitals in the world’s music capitals, and acclaimed Nonesuch recordings, he has won a large and devoted following. In an extensive profile in The New Yorker, David Blum wrote: “What one remembers most from Goode’s playing is not its beauty—exceptional as it is—but his way of coming to grips with the composer’s central thought, so that a work tends to make sense beyond one’s previous perception of it … The spontaneous formulating process of the creator [becomes] tangible in the concert hall.” According to the New York Times, “It is virtually impossible to walk away from one of Mr. Goode’s recitals without the sense of having gained some new insight, subtly or otherwise, into the works he played or about pianism itself.”

Mr. Goode’s 2008–2009 season encompasses concerto performances with the Saint Louis Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra, Munich Staatsorchester, Zurich Tonahlle Orchester and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, among others, as well as recital performances in Chicago, the Krannert Center Celebrity Series of Boston, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, among others. In spring 2009 Nonesuch Records will re-release Mr. Goode’s recording of the complete Beethoven concertos with the Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer.

In the 2007–2008 season Mr. Goode performed and curated a multi-event residency at the South Bank Centre in London as the year’s Artist-in-Residence. He also performed recitals in cities including Berlin, Paris, Milan, Toronto, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Berkeley. His orchestral appearances included performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of James Levine at Tanglewood, the London Philharmonic with Kurt Masur, the Concertgebouw Orchestra with Iván Fisher, the New York Philharmonic with Sir Colin Davis, the San Francisco Symphony with Alan Gilbert, and the Radio Philharmonique in Paris with Peter Oundjian.

In addition to his eight-event Carnegie Hall Perspectives in 2005–2006, Mr. Goode was invited to hold master classes at the City’s three leading conservatories—The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, and Mannes College The New School for Music—and to give two illustrated talks on his Perspectives repertoire at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the 2006–2007 season, he was honored for his contributions to music with the first ever Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance, which culminated in a residency at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, this year and last. Mr. Goode’s recording of the Beethoven concertos with Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra was released in 2008 by Nonesuch, which also released his historic recordings of the complete Beethoven sonatas.

During the 2006–2007 season, Mr. Goode played recitals in the major music capitals of Europe and the US, including London, Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Edinburgh, New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC. Orchestral appearances included performances with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fisher and the DSO Berlin with Herbert Blomstedt.

A native of New York, Mr. Goode studied with Elvira Szigeti and Claude Frank, with Nadia Reisenberg at the Mannes College of Music, and with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute. He has won many prizes, including the Young Concert Artists Award, First Prize in the Clara Haskil Competition, the Avery Fisher Prize, and a Grammy Award. His remarkable interpretations of Beethoven came to national attention when he played all five concertos with the Baltimore Symphony under David Zinman, and when he performed the complete cycle of sonatas at the 92nd Street Y and Kansas City’s Folly Theater.

In addition to his most recent release of Mozart solo works, Mr. Goode has made more than two-dozen recordings, including Mozart concertos with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, the complete partitas of J. S. Bach, and solo and chamber works of Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Busoni, and George Perle. Mr. Goode is the first American-born pianist to have recorded the complete Beethoven sonatas, which were nominated for a Grammy Award and universally acclaimed. With soprano Dawn Upshaw, he has recorded Goethe lieder of Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf for Nonesuch. 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’s first, long-awaited Chopin recording was also chosen Best of the Month by Stereo Review.

In recent seasons, Mr. Goode has appeared with many of the world’s greatest orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Levine, Haitink, and Ozawa; the Chicago Symphony under Eschenbach; The Cleveland Orchestra under Zinman, the San Francisco Symphony under Blomstedt; the New York Philharmonic with Sir Colin Davis; and the Toronto Symphony with Peter Oundjian. He has also appeared with the Orchestre de Paris under David Robertson, toured on several occasions with Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, and made his Musikverein debut with the Vienna Symphony. In addition, he has been heard throughout Germany in sold-out concerts with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Sir Neville Marriner.

As a recitalist, Mr. Goode has become a favorite throughout Europe and the US, making regular appearances in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Chicago, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, and the leading cities of Germany and Italy.

Mr. Goode serves with Mitsuko Uchida as co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Marlboro, Vermont. He is married to the violinist Marcia Weinfeld, and, when the Goodes are not on tour, they and their collection of some 5,000 volumes live in New York City.