Richard Goode, Wigmore Hall, review: At 72 this great American is just hitting his stride

Two Mozart sonatas interspersed with two sets of late Brahms piano miniatures sounded in theory pretty sedate for Richard Goode¹s Wigmore programme, but the opening bars of Mozart¹s A minor sonata K310 immediately banished any such thoughts. The dissonances of the Allegro maestoso had a crashing urgency, and the pace was furious: the music¹s tormented turbulence ­ often facilely attributed to the composer¹s grief at the death of his mother ­ was delivered at such volume that the hall seemed almost too small to contain it. The Andante cantabile was on a grand scale too, the whirling Presto was driven by a breathless agitation.

Goode's Brahms's 6 Klavierstucke Opus 118 remained in the same soundworld, the gear-change between eighteenth-century classicicm and nineteenth-century Romanticism was surprisingly smooth. But here Goode also drew on a luxuriously wide palette to allow each piece its separate place in the sun.

They all seemed larger than life, with their poetry in close-up, and the final Andante, largo e mesto possessing an oracular grandeur.

The first movement of Mozart¹s Sonata in F K533/494 was done with a deliciously light touch, the Andante¹s simplicity was matched by its intensity, and the concluding Rondo was exquisitely shaded. After Brahms¹s Opus 119 set, encores by Debussy and Chopin set the seal on this magnificent recital. At 72 - an age when most pianists are winding down ­- this great American is just hitting his stride.