Review: Pianist Richard Goode dazzles with virtuosic precision in Chopin Society concert

Despite all the tragedy left in its wake, you could say that COVID-19 did classical music a favor.

When there was no work available, many a musician used the layoff to sequester themselves with particular styles, composers or pieces of music that they'd always wanted to learn, but never had sufficient time to tackle.

One such musician was Richard Goode. While long regarded as one of America's foremost concert pianists — a master interpreter of such 18th- and 19th-century Viennese composers as Mozart, Beethoven and Franz Schubert — Goode had never had the time to concentrate on one of Beethoven's last and most imaginative masterworks, the 33 "Diabelli Variations" the composer created late in his life in response to a request from a publisher named Anton Diabelli.

So Goode explored the variations in great depth during the pandemic, much to the supreme benefit of Twin Cities classical music lovers Sunday afternoon. For Goode made a deeply involving interpretation of Beethoven's variations the central work on a Frederic Chopin Society recital that will almost certainly go down as one of 2023's most rewarding classical concerts.

Performed at Macalester College's acoustically sublime 317-seat Mairs Concert Hall, it proved the kind of concert it feels a privilege to have attended. At age 80, Goode not only has the knowledge, experience and well-honed skills to sculpt deep and fascinating interpretations of the great solo piano literature, but also overflows with insight that often seems to take you directly into a composer's heart, mind and spirit, as if you're having a private audience with Mozart or Beethoven.

On Sunday afternoon, there was some of each. The concert opened with two works by Mozart composed within the last six years of his too-brief life: His Fantasia in C minor (K. 475) and Sonata in F Major (K. 533). Goode proved a reliable guide through the Fantasia's wildly shifting moods, gentle strolls suddenly giving way to thunderous cloudbursts.

The Mozart sonata left the impression that Goode has tapped into some mysterious fountain of youth, as his fastest passages were clean and smooth enough to be the envy of the most athletic of young virtuosos. His touch proved tender on a soft and lovely slow movement, and he plunged into the playful finale with abandon.

Goode's interpretation returned often to a dualistic approach, fragments of Diabelli's waltz tossed to and fro from his right hand to his left, sometimes as if in argument or assenting agreement, other times in melancholy commiseration, as on the striving quality of the seventh variation that echoed the aching longing found in some of Beethoven's most sumptuous symphonic slow movements.

While the pianist invariably astounded with his awe-inspiring precision on the high-velocity Prestos and Bach-flavored fugues, the slowest variations were where he sounded as if tapping into something naked and vulnerable in the composer's voice, leaving the sense that Beethoven were calling to us from beyond the grave and Goode was his eloquent and inspiring messenger.