On the heels of the successful inaugural season of its Piano Series, the Friends of Chamber Music launched year two with the insightful, consummate musicianship of Richard Goode.
Playing a full course of Bach and Chopin to a nearly full house at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts on Tuesday night, the New York- born veteran pianist proved first and foremost that loud virtuosity is no match for the compelling emotional effect of intimate quietude through music.
With an avuncular air, Goode strode onto the oddly dimly-lit stage and wasted no time drawing his audience into Bach’s meditative Prelude and Fugue in G minor from the seminal Well-Tempered Klavier, Book II. While his tone and articulation were murky and over-pedaled in parts, Goode’s sensitivity to the Baroque master’s characteristic overlay of independent melodies woven throughout polyphonic textures was spot on.
This compelling compositional technique influenced the younger Chopin’s works, as evidenced in Goode’s delivery of a clutch of mazurkas, a nocturne and a scherzo. Upon his ebullient rendering of Bach’s French Suite No. 5 in G Major — with a standout performance of the final “Gigue” — Goode explained the connection between the two composers’ dance works, describing Chopin’s mazurkas as particularly warm and personal.
Where the 65-year-old’s turns and trills weren’t always crisp in the Bach works on the first half of the program, his imaginative interpretation and fluid delivery of a trio of Bach’s preludes and fugues after intermission erased any doubt about his technical dexterity.
With remarkable endurance, Goode then gently breezed his way through the aching tenderness of Chopin’s Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2 — every silvery run, subtle idiom and full-bodied exclamation delivered with aplomb.
Powering through a set of Chopin waltzes without a break and sans score (interestingly, he only read scores for the Bach works on the program), Goode culminated his finessed performance with a magnificent rendition of the Polish Romantic’s Polonaise- Fantasie in A-flat Major, Op. 61.
