Music

Richard Goode

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Catherine Robb

three stars

There is an air of reassurance about the way that Richard Goode commands himself at the piano. His years of experience have perhaps diminished the novelty that comes with performing the repertoire that he is most respected for. And so there was no fanfare or ceremony, no fuss or over-excitement, as he sat down to begin his renditions of Mozart and Brahms. Without the need to take risks, what Goode did offer us was confident, solid playing that safely didn’t ask too many questions of its listeners.

This matter-of-fact approach was most effective for Brahms’s Klavierstucke (Op. 118 and Op. 119); with their grandiose sweeping gestures and strong lines, anything less than an obvious, self-assured touch would have weakened the masculine power that is stereotypically associated with Brahms’s romanticism. Even the dreamiest of passages were fearlessly sanguine. But perhaps there is something more to the Klavierstucke than this – something less brazen and instead more vulnerable that could be explored by appealing to a sense of humility. And although the clarity and playfulness of Mozart’s F major Sonata also came through with Goode’s poised and unhesitant interpretation, it was the A minor Sonata that could have done with more subtlety, to effectively capture the delicate frustration and sadness that underlies what outwardly appears so flippantly precise.

Strangely, though, there was one aspect of Goode’s performance that did take me by surprise. It seems as if whilst he was playing, he accompanied every line and phrase on the piano with loud, vocal humming. As bad performance habits go, this is surely one of the worst, as it not only distracted from the music, but at times often drowned it out.