Richard Goode is the least showy of piano virtuosos. On stage, he is a picture of concentration and commitment, eschewing histrionic gestures for gruff grimaces and, occasionally, a robust singing along with the instrument. Yet he is also one of the most flamboyantly gifted interpreters of the classical and romantic repertoire, and this recital revealed the depth of his musicality in works from William Byrd to Claude Debussy. At the heart of his programme was Beethoven's late A-major sonata, Op 101. This is a piece that Goode has spent decades refining, but there was nothing complacent about his interpretation. Instead, he released an impetuous energy from the work's unique structure.
The first movement is an essay in musical anticipation, as Beethoven does not allow the music to resolve until its final bars. Goode unfurled the piece as an unbroken phrase that was suspended in harmonic limbo until its concluding cadence. The Scherzo unleashed the latent tensions of the opening movement with explosive energy, but even more powerful was the way he handled the transition from the third movement to the finale. He telescoped the power of the whole sonata into these thrilling bars, as the music cascaded into the headlong release of the fourth movement. Goode made the tortuous fugue at the centre of the movement sound like an improvisatory inspiration, a celebration of the music's hard-won resolution. The coda was capricious, and the music seemed to fold back into itself before the final, climactic chords.
If Goode's Beethoven was impulsive and spontaneous, his Chopin was immaculately structured. The four Mazurkas, Op 30, were miniature studies in rhythmic ingenuity. The Polonaise-Fantaisie brought the same attention to the intricacies of articulation and phrasing, but he gave the whole piece an imposing, classical momentum. A selection of Debussy's Préludes was equally convincing: he illuminated each piece with painterly insight, from the volatile, liquid imagery of Ondine to the frozen landscape of Footsteps in the Snow, and the unpredictable undulations of The Hills of Anacapri.
