Richard Goode lends a lively voice to an exuberant all-Bach piano program
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Version 0 of 1. J.S. Bach is the foundation of modern keyboard music, but his works, at least in performance, have been claimed as the province of specialists and early music practitioners. Richard Goode’s recital at the Phillips Collection on Sunday afternoon was something, therefore, of a rarity: an all-Bach program played on a modern Steinway by an artist better known for his Beethoven and Brahms. The venerable American pianist offered lively, genial performances with a plain-spoken authority and crowd-pleasing affability. Translating Bach for the piano, Goode had clear ideas about structure and voicing, without ever resorting to dry pedantry. His Bach was sunny, earthy, jovial and good-humored. He applied the pedal freely but judiciously for color, obscuring Bach’s contrapuntal writing only with a wash of sound in the recital opener, the Prelude and Fugue in C from Book II of “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” Above all, Goode brought out a sense of line and the joyous singing quality of Bach’s music. Yet the interpretive delights of Goode’s playing were tempered by some technical shortcomings: the brusqueness of his attack, a rough-hewn tone and the occasionally clumsy run or trill. In his straightforward traversal of the three-part Sinfonias, Goode’s attempts to sustain a more meditative mood for some of the minor key pieces were let down by the inelegance of his touch. In Goode’s uneven reading of the C-minor Partita, the Courante sounded rushed and rhythmically unsettled, while the concluding Capriccio was sluggish and disjointed. The Italian Concerto offered a microcosm of Goode’s recital. The outer movements were ebullient, with a delightful and winning sense of interplay between the “solo” and “orchestral” parts. But one missed the sheer tonal beauty in this most poetic of slow movements. The highlight of the afternoon came in the first half of the recital, with the French Suite No. 5 in G. Occasionally singing along à la Glenn Gould, though less annoyingly, Goode took obvious joy in bringing to life the sprightly, dancelike character of the movements and making the music swing. |