MUSIC REVIEW : Goode Plays Beethoven and Schubert

Like mushrooms and true love, genuine Beethoven players spring up, unannounced, and in unlikely places.

For instance: the last half-decade has produced an unpredicted Beethoven specialist in the person of the American musician Richard Goode, who until recently seemed to be merely an unprepossessing pianist of solid credentials but small charisma.

Now, as demonstrated again in his first Ambassador Auditorium recital Tuesday night, the 46-year-old Goode casts a long shadow over the field. Through musical achievement alone, but with the acknowledged benefit of widespread commercial dissemination of his sonata recordings, Goode continues the German-American tradition of Beethoven playing exemplified earlier in this century by Schnabel, Rudolf Serkin and Arrau.

There is more than one viable way to play each of the composer’s 32 piano sonatas. Goode displayed some of the variables in the first half of his Pasadena program, that half devoted to the Sonata in C minor, Opus 10, No. 1, the Bagatelles of Opus 126 and the E-flat Sonata, Opus 31, No. 3. After intermission, Goode move to another plane entirely, in an incandescent performance of Schubert’s Sonata in D, Opus 53.

The enigmatic, pre-Lisztian ruminations of the six Opus 126 pieces made a strong centerpiece for the Beethoven grouping, and reiterated the many connections between first-period germinations and last-period blooms.

Goode chose not to underplay the seminal Opus 10 work, first of the composer’s three great C-minor sonatas, but to give it a complete dynamic and coloristic range. More restraint, and tighter nuances, marked his playing of the characterful Opus 31, No. 3, which emerged with all its grotesqueries happily in place.

A thorough warm-up thus achieved, Goode next shared with his rapt audience an inspired reconsideration of Schubert’s oft-neglected Opus 53, one in which he moved through the impassioned opening movement in one roaring breath, as it were, and with the heat of one inventing the music in the moment.

There was no letdown in the subsequent movements. A full measure of intensity and lyricism--deepest concentration without a sense of frenzy--marked the openhearted slow movement. Exquisite detailing, in a context of inexorably direct songfulness, illuminated the Scherzo. The finale then moved emotionally upward, into seraphic regions, Goode transporting his listeners even as Schubert seemed to transport the pianist.

At the end, there were seconds of silence before one gun-jumper shouted “Bravo!” The sentiment was admirable, the timing early.