Goode's Great at Gala

The superb American pianist Richard Goode and the invaluable San Francisco Performances (SFP) crossed paths on the occasion of the latter’s 40th Anniversary Gala at Herbst Theater in San Francisco last Tuesday evening, and the results gave gala donors something to cheer about.

Richard Goode

The New York City pianist is essentially a chamber musician who has made his career in places like Marlboro and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 

It only has been in later life that he began a solo career and the qualities that made him a great chamber player have carried over to his work as a soloist—an introspective approach to the music and a complete absence of look-at-me virtuosity that is so much in vogue with many of today’s younger soloists (think Lang Lang and Yuja Wang).

SFP is the perfect venue for a soloist with Goode’s chamber music sensibilities. Season after season, SFP presents the leading chamber music groups and artists to Bay Area audiences. No surprise then that SFP would chose to celebrate its 40th Anniversary Gala with a Richard Goode recital.

It was Goode’s 13th performance with SFP going back to 1985. 

The format for the Gala was one hour of uninterrupted playing featuring the music of Janacek, Chopin and Debussy. 

The Janacek was ‘In the Mists’; Chopin was represented by his Nocturne in E-flat Major, Opus 55, No.2 and Three Mazurkas, Opus 59; and Debussy by selections from Images, Book II, La Soiree dans Grenade and I’isle joyeuse. 

The Janacek and Chopin pieces almost seemed like warm ups for what was to come. The Debussy selections were by far the most interesting part of the recital. 

In particular, I found Debussy’s ‘L’isle joyeuse’, the last piece on the program, to be stirring and special. The story behind the piece is fascinating. The Frenchman was having a love affair with a fancy lady and his wife, in deep distress, shot herself.

Undeterred, Debussy and his lover went off to the Isle of Jersey in the North Sea for a summer idyll in 1904, Jersey being the joyous island of the title. 

Claude Debussy and Emma Bardac

He apparently had quite a time there judging from the ecstatic and rapturous nature of the music he was inspired to write.

Though Debussy clearly was a heel—he refused to pay his wife’s medical bills after the shooting-- the world has been the beneficiary of the wonderful music his scandalous trip to Jersey produced.

This is also the time the French master wrote ‘La Mer’, perhaps his greatest work.

Goode was great in the Debussy music. Once he started playing this group, it became clear that this was what the concert was all about for him. He did not seem fully at ease in the Janacek and Chopin though they were well enough played.

The first piece of the Images, ‘Cloches a traver le feuilles,’ (‘Bells Heard through Leaves’) was a perfect fit for the fall season—it has a Halloween theme and the recital took place only a few days before the holiday. 

How evocative and enchanting this music is! The idea for the composer is to create a sound world that suggests the images he or she is trying to convey. 

In this piece, it’s a sound world that creates the image of far away bells heard through fallen leaves in a forest. Goode’s terrific ‘Debussy technique’ enabled him to translate that sound world to those of us lucky enough to be in the audience.

I liked the format of the Gala’s one hour of uninterrupted playing. In a normal recital, there can be too many distractions and too much switching of the gears. After the Debussy, I was happy to let the gorgeous music reverberate in my brain. I subscribe to a philosophy of more by less.