COMPOSERS: Beethoven
LABELS: Elektra Nonesuch
WORKS: The Complete Piano Sonatas
PERFORMER: Richard Goode (piano)
CATALOGUE NO: 7559-79328-2 DDD
The American pianist Richard Goode is a Beethoven specialist. A former pupil of Rudolf Serkin, he inherits Serkin’s ideal of objective truth to the text and sense of spiritual depth. You may feel that Goode is a bit too serious for, after all, humour plays a big part in many of the sonatas, and the smiling, lyrical side of Beethoven’s music is overcast. Goode’s approach shows its limitations in the benign and jovial Op. 90, whose throwaway ending he draws out in an unintentionally comic quest for ‘significance’.
Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas
The American pianist Richard Goode is a Beethoven specialist. A former pupil of Rudolf Serkin, he inherits Serkin’s ideal of objective truth to the text and sense of spiritual depth. You may feel that Goode is a bit too serious for, after all, humour plays a big part in many of the sonatas, and the smiling, lyrical side of Beethoven’s music is overcast. Goode’s approach shows its limitations in the benign and jovial Op. 90, whose throwaway ending he draws out in an unintentionally comic quest for ‘significance’.
Our rating
4
Published: January 20, 2012 at 1:23 pm