Concert Review—

Concert Was A Welcome Return By Celebrated Pianist Richard Goode

By Julie Stern

After nearly a quarter of a century, pianist Richard Goode returned to Newtown last weekend to open this season’s Friends of Music chamber concert series, and he indeed opened it with a bang. Playing to a nearly packed house who sat in hushed silence, Mr Goode put together an impressive program that showcased his reputation as an interpreter of both classical and romantic composers.

The concert began with a quartet of Bach “sinfonias,” or inventions, starting with the deceptively simple E Major and building toward a contrapuntal harmony of voices, culminating in the B Major Prelude and Fugue.

From here he went on to a magnificent Sonata in D Major by Haydn that was so melodic and courtly that it just makes you want to hear more. Haydn was then followed by Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (No. 14 in C Sharp Minor). While the opening movement is of course the most familiar, and a popular favorite, the subsequent “Allegretto” and “Presto” form a bridge that takes the audience from the classicism of the Bach and Haydn to the 19th Century romanticism that comprised the second half of the afternoon.

This began with Three Preludes by Claude Debussy. Each was a vivid musical picture, ranging from an old cathedral sunken in the ocean, to a capricious water sprite, to a comical and eccentric old general, doing a cakewalk.

The bulk of the second half was then devoted to Frederic Chopin. Three Mazurkas, or Polish country dances, began with the traditional G Major, leading on to the more lively C Major and finally the deeper and moodier C Sharp minor.

These were followed by the B Major Nocturne, Opus 52 – one of the last Nocturnes Chopin wrote – and then the concert closed with a rousing Polonaise in F Sharp Minor.

Everybody left the hall smiling, and hoping only that Mr Goode doesn’t wait so long to return the next time.