Pianist Richard Goode in concert January 22, 2010

Renowned pianist Richard Goode, one of the foremost interpreters of piano works living today, returns to San Francisco Performances for a recital featuring works by Bach, Haydn, and Schumann. The artist will also give a free pre-concert talk on Haydn beginning at 7 p.m.

The complete program for the Herbst concert includes preludes and fugues from Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II; three Haydn Piano Sonatas (C Major, Hob. XVI:21, C minor, Hob. XVI:20 and G Major, Hob. XVI:40); and Schumann's stunning Kreisleriana, Opus 16.

Along with serving as co-Artistic Director (with Mitsuko Uchida) of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Marlboro, Vermont, Goode has been a resident artist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois for the past two years. He was honored in 2006 with the first ever Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance. Other awards include an Avery Fisher Prize and a Grammy Award with clarinetist Stoltzman.

Goode's recording of the Beethoven Concerti with Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra was released in May 2009 by Nonesuch Records - the same label that released his historic recordings of the complete Beethoven sonatas. Other recent releases on the label include a collection of Mozart sonatas and short pieces, as well as a recital disc with Dawn Upshaw.

In an extensive profile in The New Yorker, David Blum wrote: "What one remembers most from Goode's playing is not its beauty - exceptional as it is - but his way of coming to grips with the composer's central thought, so that a work tends to make sense beyond one's previous perception of it..." Writes the New York Times, "It is virtually impossible to walk away from one of Mr. Goode's recitals without the sense of having gained some new insight, subtly or otherwise, into the works he played or about pianism itself."

Official Website: http://www.performances.org