Associate Artist at the Southbank Centre for 2007/8
As part of a new series of Artists in Residence, Southbank Centre invited pianist Richard Goode into residence during the 2007/08 season.
Goode, often described as the quintessential ‘musician’s musician’, programmed a series of events in which he appeared in multiple guises, from the most intimate to the most public. He appeared not simply as a pianist, but as a soloist, chamber musician, accompanist, presenter, teacher and inspirer.
Introduction by Richard Goode
"The Southbank has generously given me a free hand, and these programs reflect a few special fascinations. First, Chopin - so familiar and beloved, yet such a mysterious, even paradoxical figure, who seems to inhabit a musical country all his own. I have included works by the two composers he venerated - Bach and Mozart - and one, Debussy, who owes so much to him. In talking about Chopin's "Voices", I want to touch on his pianistic translation of bel canto, his debt to Bach, and the structural and harmonic originality which keeps his music ever strange and new. Working with Dawn Upshaw has been one of the purest pleasures of my musical life. Our program together centers on Schoenberg's Book of the Hanging Gardens , in its density and evocative power a kind of dark (very dark) 20th century Dichterliebe . In another, perhaps antithetical musical world, Stravinsky's radiant ballet Agon , in his seldom-heard two-piano version, is featured in a programme of Beethoven (the Great Fugue), Schumann, Schubert and Debussy. I think there are interesting "lines of force" joining these apparently disparate pieces. I know I look forward immensely to collaborating with the wonderful pianist Jonathan Biss ." 
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Events
Recital with Dawn Upshaw
Wednesday 7 November 2007 QEH
Dawn Upshaw, soprano
Richard Goode, piano
| Schoenberg |
The Book of the Hanging Gardens |
| Berg |
Piano Sonata Op.1 |
| Wolf |
Lieder |
| Debussy |
Songs |
Reviews:
The Times
9 November 2007
Upshaw/Goode, Queen Elizabeth Hall by Hilary Finch
Four Stars
"Professional accompanists may be gnashing their teeth as they see their territory increasingly invaded; but solo pianists are not the solitary creatures they used to be. On two consecutive nights this week, András Schiff and Richard Goode collaborated with singers in programmes as challenging for them as for their audiences.
Richard Goode, at the start of his term as associate artist at the Southbank Centre, seemed to want to make a point about cooperation. He and the soprano Dawn Upshaw (herself collaborator supreme with everyone from the Kronos Quartet to Peter Sellars to Osvaldo Golijov) attracted a sizeable audience for a substantial programme of Berg and Schoenberg, with a little Schubert sweetening the air in between.
Goode's solo spot was a questing, querulous, yet always movingly lyrical performance of the Piano Sonata that Berg wrote on "graduating" from the discipleship of Schoenberg. Before it came the Seven Early Songs of the pupil, and the master's songcycle, The Book of the Hanging Gardens. It was quite some feast.
Upshaw's soprano has of late found a new depth and focus. The bright immediacy of her excited personal response to all she sings still burns through; but now there is both more stillness and a greater urgency in how she communicates it. Berg's seven songs were wonder-filled, warmly shared; Schoenberg's extraordinary cycle of poems by Stefan George a performance in which both piano and voice flexed the muscle of Schoenberg's writing, minutely attentive to its expressions through the shifting colours of every register, every movement."
The Telegraph
9 November 2007
Who will follow this lieder pairing?
Matthew Rye reviews Dawn Upshaw and Richard Goode at the Queen Elizabeth Hall
"Among the innovations at the revamped Southbank Centre is a new series of artists in residence.
The first incumbent is the American pianist Richard Goode, who over the coming months can be heard in the guise of concerto soloist, recitalist, teacher and chamber musician. He began his residency, though, in a shared recital with the soprano Dawn Upshaw - accompanist is too demeaning a word to describe the partnership that was in evidence here.
Indeed, in several respects, this was no ordinary lieder recital. For one thing, Upshaw is no ordinary lieder singer: her breadth of repertoire and experience in other musical fields inform her artistry in fascinating ways. How often do we get to hear Schoenberg's seminal Stefan George cycle The Book of the Hanging Gardens, for example? This work, written almost exactly 100 years ago, found its composer finally freeing himself from tonality; yet at the same time it follows in the long line of Romantic song cycles about love and loss extending back to Schubert and Schumann."
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Saturday 28 November 2007 RFH
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
Richard Goode, piano
| Beethoven |
Piano Concerto No.3 |
Solo recital
Wednesday 27 February 2008 QEH
Richard Goode, piano
| JS Bach |
French Suite No.3 in B minor, BWV.814 |
| Chopin |
Mazurka in C, Op.24, No.2 in C |
| Chopin |
Mazurka in G Op.50 No.1 |
| Chopin |
Mazurka in A minor, Op.59/1 |
| Chopin |
Mazurka in B minor, Op.33/4 |
| Chopin |
Impromptu in F sharp major Op.36 |
| Mozart |
Rondo in A minor, K511 |
| Chopin |
Scherzo No.4 in E, Op.54 |
| **** |
|
| Debussy |
Two Etudes: Pour les arpèges composés; Pour les octaves |
| Chopin |
Nocturne in C minor Op.48 No.1 |
| Chopin |
Nocturne in B major, Op.62, No.1 |
| Chopin |
Polonaise in F sharp minor, Op.44 |
Lecture recital
Friday 29 February 2008 QEH
Richard Goode, piano
Chopin's Voices - an exploration of the music of Chopin including performances of various works for piano by Chopin.
Masterclass
Saturday 1 March 2008 Purcell Room
Masterclass with Richard Goode and students from London music colleges.
Two Pianos-Four Hands
Saturday 31 May 2008 QEH
Richard Goode, piano
Jonathan Biss, piano
Schubert
|
Lebensstürme
(Allegro in A minor for piano duet), D.947 |
Schumann
|
Six Canons, Op.56
(arranged by Debussy for two pianos) |
Beethoven
|
Grosse Fuge, Op.134
(arranged by the composer for piano duet) |
| **** |
|
Stravinsky
|
Agon
(transcribed by the composer for two pianos) |
| Debussy |
En blanc et noir (for two pianos) |
Guardian
Goode/Biss, Queen Elizabeth Hall, by Erica Jeal
5 stars
Piano duets rarely make it out of the living room and into the concert hall, but the appeal of this programme went far deeper than novelty. Richard Goode had invited Jonathan Biss to join him for the final appearance of his South Bank mini-residency, and so on the platform were perhaps the finest two US pianists of their respective generations. It seemed a meeting of equals. For Biss, at 27, less than half Goode's age, that is praise indeed.
They are uncannily well matched. Visually, Biss is the more flamboyant player, but he shares Goode's intellectual rigour, and the pair had precisely calibrated the weight of their attack. In Schubert's A minor Lebensstürme, Biss traced arabesques above Goode's insistent, pulsing bass.
Only in Beethoven's own arrangement of his Grosse Fuge did Goode, now taking the upper part, stand out - inevitably, given how far up the keyboard his embattled lines travelled. Beethoven's arrangement was intended for two players at one instrument, but Goode and Biss sat at separate pianos - possibly for their own safety, given their constantly flying hands. Hearing this fantastically wrought piece on piano rather than string quartet does not make it any more comprehensible, but it was impossible to deny its drama as the theme thundered out.
Everything else, bar the encore (Schumann's reflective Abendlied), involved two pianos. The Bach-like melodies in Schumann's Six Etudes en Forme de Canon, in Debussy's arrangement, interwove in beatific equilibrium. Stravinsky's own version of his ballet Agon teemed with dancing energy. Even better was Debussy's En Blanc et Noir, the only work written specifically for two pianos, which was played with generous exuberance yielding to gossamer delicacy. This partnership is too rewarding to be a one-off.
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Audio Interview
Recorded in June 2006, Richard Goode talks to Meurig Bowen about his 2007/8 season Associate Artist residency at Southbank Centre. Click on the link below to hear this interview:
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Profile
Beethoven and the Bronx
Growing up in New York, pianist Richard Goode was fired by a passion for music.
So why was he so reluctant to become a solo star, asks Andrew Clements
These days, Richard Goode would be an automatic pick for most piano world XIs, but 20 years ago few on this side of the Atlantic had heard of the New York-born musician. Goode was dividing his time between teaching and playing chamber music, and had reached a point, he says, where he was feeling like "a bit of a frustrated soloist".
Then came the breakthrough: his revelatory recordings of the Beethoven piano sonata cycle. Goode's uncomplicated directness and knack of communicating musical truths struck a chord around the world; in this paper, critic Edward Greenfield was one of the first to recognise the outstanding quality of Goode's performance.
But he didn't take to the jet-setting life of the soloist. "The whole battle is to try to make music in public the way you think it should be made," he says, "the way you sometimes think you make it in the practice room. Perhaps one of the reasons I took so long to have a solo career was that I felt ambivalent about the whole thing."
Now, though, he travels so much he has little time left to teach - at his last count he had "exactly one student". As well as performing at recitals and concerts, he is one of the artistic directors (fellow pianist Mitsuko Uchida is the other) of the distinguished Marlboro music course and festival, held each summer in rural Vermont.
This season, he has taken on a role as the first associate artist at the Southbank Centre in London. Goode began his residency last autumn by giving a recital with soprano Dawn Upshaw that included Schoenberg's rarely heard song cycle The Book of the Hanging Garden. This month, he returns to London for a solo recital of Bach, Chopin, Mozart and Debussy, a series of masterclasses and a lecture recital devoted to Chopin. In May, he makes his final appearance in a piano duo recital with fellow American Jonathan Biss.
The self-effacing modesty that is such an integral part of Goode's music-making seems unaffected by his promotion to the international league. He has remained faithful to his record label Nonesuch, rather than signing for one of the big multinationals, and he still plays the piano for the same reasons he always did, ever since he was fired with enthusiasm for the instrument as a child growing up in the Bronx. "My parents were not concert goers, so concerts began for me a little while after I began the piano. My initial response had been to the human voice, when I heard pop songs on the radio. My parents thought that was a good sign and arranged for me to have piano lessons."
He soon showed exceptional promise. "The first time I was very taken with a pianist, it was with Rudolf Serkin. I played for him when I was about 11, and then heard him play a concert that included Beethoven's A major Sonata Op 101 and the Diabelli Variations. I remember following the variations and trying to work out where he was. He was the first great pianist I heard."
When he was old enough to go to music college, Goode went to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where Serkin was then director. "He took charge of my musical education," he says. "No other musician has made as powerful an impression on me, except perhaps for Artur Schnabel, whom I never heard except on records." He did go on to study briefly with Schnabel's son, Karl-Ulrich, and cites him as a major musical influence on his life, along with another European emigre who taught at Curtis, Mieczysaw Horszowski.
Between them, Schnabel and Horszowski provided the counterbalance and complement to Serkin's influence that Goode badly needed. "The emotional and dramatic engine of his playing was so powerful that we sometimes felt we would be run over by it," Goode says. Yet Serkin's example provided him with an artistic template and a direct link to the central European tradition of the first half of the 20th century - not only in the Viennese classics but in later music, too. When Goode studied the piano music of Berg and Schoenberg with Serkin, he was working with someone who had played those works for the composers themselves.
It seems no accident, then, that it should have been his recordings of Beethoven that provided Goode with his breakthrough; as for Serkin, it has been that core Austro-German repertory - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert - that has remained central to his musical life. These days, his recital programmes regularly include Chopin and Debussy, too. "Playing that music is a pleasure for me, and the kinds of different things you can do with it are very refreshing."
There are significant areas of the repertory Goode doesn't explore: the high-octane bravura piano writing of Liszt or Rachmaninov doesn't figure at all. "Basically, I play the music I love best. There are some works I just don't play. I learn slowly, and there are certain pieces that I would have to spend so much time on before they were worth hearing - the ratio of work to notes would be very high. So they have to be good."
If there's a hint of self-deprecation in that remark, it's misleading: much of the work Goode does play demands just as much technical prowess as the flashier pieces he avoids. It's a matter of temperament and taste, and of knowing where his musical strengths lie. Right now, Goode is using those strengths to outstanding effect.
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Press Quotes 
Recital in Washington / Debussy
"Pianist Richard Goode brought his customary clarity of thought and finger work to a meaty program of masterworks... In a set of Debussy preludes, Goode was a master tone painter, summoning up the widest palette imaginable on the instrument. In Ondine, he limned a shimmering, darting portrait of the water nymph, and in the climax of La Cathedrale Engloutie the walls veritably shook from the force."
Washington Post , October 2007
"Pianist Richard Goode brought his customary clarity of thought and finger work to a meaty program of masterworks... In a set of Debussy preludes, Goode was a master tone painter, summoning up the widest palette imaginable on the instrument. In Ondine, he limned a shimmering, darting portrait of the water nymph, and in the climax of La Cathedrale Engloutie the walls veritably shook from the force." , October 2007
Recital at the Wigmore Hall, London / Brahms, Fauré, Debussy & Haydn
"Goode's handling of Haydn's fragmentary D major sonata of 1773 was light, bright and poised, but there was tonal weight in the broad arc of the adagio and glittering technique in the disconcertingly abrupt finale. The same clarity produced real revelations in Brahms's Fantasias, op. 116. Too often slurred and sweeping in less imaginative hands, the seven miniatures were here pared back, allowing Brahms's characteristic economy and harmonic daring to shine forth. The sixth Nocturne by Fauré, the intellectual pianist's dream composer, allowed Goode to show off a weightier side of his virtuosity. But the second book of Debussy's Preludes took us deepest into his pianism. Debussy's enigmatic qualities make him in many respects the ideal composer for Goode."
The Guardian , May 2007
Recital in Buffalo / Brahms & Bach
"What Goode does at the piano is warm, engaging and marvelously subtle - mesmerizing. ...In the hands of a fine pianist like Goode, the colors are never pale or blurred. They're vivid and interesting."
Buffalo News , February 2007
Perspectives Series at Carnegie Hall, New York
"Goode's pianism has always been marked by lucidity and transparency; the music's glow seems to emanate from deep inside the notes."
The New York Times , October 2006
Residency at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival
"Richard Goode's performance took the breath away with its sheer, heart-stopping beauty."
The Guardian , August 2006
"His light, flowing and superbly-articulated Bach was characterised by expressive playing, while his very superior account of the Schoenberg stripped everything from the music bar its intense expressiveness: the final, poignant, Mahlerian aphorism stopped the heart… Goode's unfailingly singing and poetic performance of this miracle of music was spellbinding"
The Herald , August 2006
"The contrasting Adagio, however, was all Goode's. Stately and majestically poignant, and miles from the maudlin it sometimes threatens to become, in Goode's hands the movement was all heightened emotional of the themes and scoring that surround it."
The Herald , August 2006
"Beethoven's Sonata in A flat Op.110 is one of the iconic late sonatas and a work that fascinated Richard Goode from an early age. For him, these seemingly simple pieces are complex when you look at what is going on under the surface. Things are not always as they seem. It was fascinating to hear him take the sonata apart, analysing themes, structures, and taking an idea, turning it over and seeing it from all angles. Goode believes that Beethoven had a narrative plot line in his head while writing, and certainly some of the instructions the composer dictates in terms of speed and expression would suggest that. There there's the whole academic debate about accents and where they should go, with Goode cheerfully concluding that actually it doesn't matter."
The Scotsman , August 2006
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Press Release
RICHARD GOODE IN MANY GUISES
ARTISTIC RESIDENCY AT SOUTHBANK CENTRE
First events, 7 November Queen Elizabeth Hall and 28 November Royal Festival Hall
World-renowned pianist Richard Goode will take up an Artistic Residency at Southbank Centre for the 2007/8 season, beginning with a concert with soprano Dawn Upshaw on 7 November. Goode has programmed a series of events in which he appears in multiple guises, from the intimate to the public. The quintessential 'musician's musician', Goode will be seen at Southbank Centre as soloist, chamber musician, accompanist, presenter, teacher and thinker. This is a unique platform for Goode to explore repertoire that is close to his heart, and his skills as a thoughtful and intelligent programmer throw up some surprising and exciting repertoire. Concerts later in the season include those with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and with Jonathan Biss, in addition to a lecture-recital and masterclass. Goode is one in a new series of Artists in Residence at Southbank Centre.
The first event of the residency explores the musician's role as accompanist when Goode is joined by soprano Dawn Upshaw, continuing a longstanding musical partnership.
Richard Goode said: "Working with Dawn Upshaw has been one of the purest pleasures of my musical life. Our programme centres on Schoenberg's Book of the Hanging Gardens, which in its density and evocative power is a kind of dark, (very dark) 20th-century Dichterliebe."
The programme also includes Berg's Piano Sonata, Op.1 and songs by Wolf and Debussy.
Goode's residency continues with a concert with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach on 28 November 2007, a recital and a lecture-recital in February 2008, a masterclass, coaching young artists, in March and a programme of music for two pianos-four hands, with pianist Jonathan Biss in May.
Click on the link below to download a full PDF version of this press release:
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