Volume 21 Issue 1 - September 2015

Beat by Beat | Classical & Beyond
Three Piano
Masters
PAUL ENNIS
“There are so many composers and so many projects,” Stewart
Goodyear said recently to WholeNote editor David Perlman.
“What makes this life so exciting is that the discovery is endless;
the road doesn’t end and there’s discovery galore.”
The two men were wrapping up the latest edition of Conversations
The WholeNote for the magazine’s YouTube channel, a conversation
prompted by Goodyear’s upcoming appearance as soloist in the
first concert of Mooredale Concerts 2015/16 season, September 27.
Billed as “Legendary Piano Variations,” it’s the coupling of two major
works, Bach’s joyful Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli
Variations (the essence of which, according to Alfred Brendel and
others, is humour).
Goodyear talked about the similarities in the two pieces: “They both
centre around dances. There is humour in both (of course used very
differently), voices, innovative harmonies – one in each set almost
sounds like a 21st-century work, the harmonies are so advanced it still
shocks the listener. Even if the listener has heard it around 10,000
times – like yours truly – it always makes a huge impression and I’m
bowled over by what I hear.”
That’s the boyish pianistic explorer talking, the 37-year-old pianist
who is famous for the Beethoven “Sonatathon” in which he has
played all 32 sonatas in chronological order at one sitting, who calls
himself a “music gourmet” with an appetite for big programs (such
as performing all five of the Beethoven piano concertos with the
Niagara Symphony Orchestra on Hallowe’en night, repeating the
marathon the following Sunday afternoon, November 1). Or, on the
same weekend as the Mooredale date, performing all five Beethoven
concertos in a slightly more traditional setting with Edwin Outwater
and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony: One and Four on Friday
evening; Three (and Symphony No.8) on Saturday afternoon; Two and
Five Saturday evening.
“It humbles me as an interpreter,” Goodyear continued, discussing
his Toronto recital. “I always want to bring an intimacy to both of
those works…to get into the marrow.”
Playing these two monumental works on the same recital is “like a
Stewart Goodyear
Canadian program for me,” he says. His introduction to the Goldberg
Variations was Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording of the piece “and then
immediately after, I heard [Gould’s] second [recording].” The first
recording of the Diabelli Variations he heard was Anton Kuerti’s.
Goodyear own CD of the Diabellis was released last fall by Marquis
and very favourably reviewed, by among others Christina Petrowska
Quilico in our November 2014 issue.
Goodyear had lived with the Goldbergs all his life before finally
performing them in public for the first time on Gould’s own piano at
the National Arts Centre in Ottawa last spring, surrounded by portraits
of Gould. “I was face to face with Glenn Gould,” he said. “It gave me
another excuse to connect with the audience.”
Gould’s piano felt custom made to him, he says. He found playing it
“challenging” with its “brilliant sound and lots of colours. Just being a
part of that history inspired me a lot,” he continued. “I felt that there
was something spiritual going on.”
ANITA ZVONAR
14 | Sept 1 - Oct 7, 2015 thewholenote.com