Our 2007/2008 Season
Sunday - 16 September 2007 - 3:00 pm
Richard Goode, Piano
About
Over the past twenty-five years 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 the 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.”
Richard Goode has played recitals in the major music capitols in Europe and the United States, including London, Brussels, Lisbon, Madrid, Leipzig, Rotterdam, Warsaw, Boston, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and an all-Bach program at Disney Hall in Los Angeles. Recent orchestral appearances included the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Bernard Haitink and the Tonhalle Zurch with David Zinman and a two-week European tour with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer. Just this summer he could be heard at Tanglewood, following an impressive Carnegie Hall concert this past spring.
A native of New York, Richard 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 Haksil Competition, the Avery Fisher Prize, and a Grammy Award.
His remarkable interpretations of Beethoven came to national attention when he played all five concerti with the Baltimore Symphony under David Zinman, and when he performed the complete cycle of sonatas at New York's 92nd Street Y and Kansas City's Folly Theater.
In addition to his most recent release of Mozart solo works, Richard Goode has made more than two-dozen recordings, including Mozart Concerti with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas, the complete Partitas by J S Bach, and solo and chamber works of Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Busoni and George Perle. Goode is the first American-born pianist to have recorded the complete Beethoven Sonatas, which were nominated for a 1994 Grammy Award. With soprano Dawn Upshaw, he has recorded Goethe Lieder of Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf for Nonesuch. The four recordings of Mozart Concerti with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra were received with wide critical acclaim, including many ”Best of the Year” nominations and awards and 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 and described as ”absolutely magical... glorious playing.”
Over the last few seasons, Richard 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 under Peter Oundjian. He has also appeared with the Orchestre de Paris under David Robertson, and toured on a number of occasions with Ian Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra, as well as making his Musikverein debut with the Vienna Symphony. He has been heard throughout Germany in sold-out concerts with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Sir Neville Marriner.