Pianist to give an intimate performance

American pianist Richard Goode’s solo recital Wednesday night at UCI’s Irvine Barclay Theatre will not leave you gasping for air through a relentless barrage of blisteringly fast scales, crashing chords and flailing limbs.

Goode, instead, uses his skill to explore the complexity of music, finding in every voice of a layered musical fabric a significance that is often overlooked by less sensitive musicians. Possessed of an unusually broad palette of tone colors, the pianist can imbue each voice with a different character.

He appreciates nuance and picked Wednesday’s program of mostly short works by Bach and Chopin because both composers were so adept at crafting rich polyphonic textures capable of affecting visceral emotions.

Bach, who died decades before Chopin was born, revolutionized multi-voice writing with his fugues that have three or four different intricate melodic lines running simultaneously, playing off one another.

“Chopin was minutely concerned with writing beautiful voice leading, and I think he found Bach a continual inspiration in writing of parts,” Goode said.

Goode’s program begins with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor from the Well Tempered Clavier and his fifth French Suite, followed by a few Chopin Mazurkas (short, folk dances), a nocturne, the composer’s “demonic” (as Goode puts it) Scherzo in C-sharp minor and his lyrical Polonaise-Fantasie. The program finishes with Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat Major.

Goode is no stranger to playing in big auditoriums — he will play much of the same repertoire at Carnegie Hall next week — but he particularly likes smaller venues.

“When you play intimate music you like to be in a space where you can sense everybody there.”

With 800 seats, the Barclay Theatre provides him with just that. Goode has long been a household name, and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County invited him to perform here last almost 20 years ago. Now he’s touring as he awaits the release of his newest album, the complete set of Beethoven’s piano concertos played with the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Pianist Richard Goode, presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County

WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday

WHERE: Irvine Barclay Theatre

COST: $45 to $65

INFO: www.philharmonicsociety.org

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].