Pam Goldberg

This all-late Schubert recital from 2017 stands as one of those affectionate demonstrations of a gifted pianist, Pam Goldberg, a pupil of chamber music veteran Joseph Kalichstein. By now, Ms. Goldberg’s program has become quite familiar, so we judge her by her easy finesse and realization of Schubert’s especial style. The B-flat Major Impromptu that opens the program, built as a theme-and-variations, offers Goldberg a panoply of colors, lyrical and dramatic, resonantly effected on her Steinway B. Her execution of runs, triplets, and syncopated, dotted rhythms proves competent and compelling. The extending, natural line of the music has clean flow and internal flux, at once.

The big work, the epic 1828 Sonata in A Major, calls upon a panoramic sense of scale, given the majestic, first movement Allegro and its reliance on triplet activity to counter the stentorian affect of the opening motif. A kind of “fate” impulse permeates the various transitions, although it yields to a poetic intimation of tragic nostalgia. The mix becomes contrapuntal and learned, but without pedantry. Goldberg elicits sighs and passionate gestures from the development section, marked by a fateful bass line. Schubert’s occasional harmonic sojourns into circuitous routes receive their color due. Ms. Goldberg in her liner notes mentions Yuja Wang as an inspiration for this piece; happily, some aspects of Wang’s percussive approach do not infiltrate this rendition.

The second movement, the Andantino in F# Minor, stands as Schubert’s corresponding moment of tragic utterance, as that of the same impulse in the second movement of the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. Schubert’s startling middle section in C# Minor torrentially explodes with contrapuntal, toccata figures from Bach, here in a movement of spiritual desolation. After the storm, the consoling lyric of the opening reappears, ornamented by triplets, now even more permeated by wistful nostalgia. Somehow, in the midst of such darkness, we are reminded that F# is the relative minor of the sonata’s key of A, a lesson Schubert may have gleaned from Mozart’s Concerto No. 23, K. 488.

Goldberg’s lightly articulate Scherzo (in C Major) casts a salon intimacy upon the proceedings, akin to the Schubertiads that applauded the composer’s works in his own time. A C# Minor run takes us, by way of some digressions, to the D Major Trio. This otherwise unassuming music suddenly assumes a darker cast, much in the mode of the middle of the preceding movement. Schubert’s earlier, 1817 Sonata, D. 537 slow movement provides the lyrical subject for the Rondo finale in abridged sonata form, with Goldberg’s seamless triplets in abundance. Once more, the intrusion of C# Minor attests to a dark, dramatic impulse in an otherwise beatific moment. Some potent counterpoint makes its presence, highly punctuated and rife with pregnant pauses. A digression into E Major leads us not “astray,” but to a false recapitulation (in F# Minor) prior to Presto coda. Such wonderfully coloristic writing, dark at times but no less songful and supported by a cosmic mirth, produces a grand effect almost in defiance of Beethoven’s notion of keyboard drama. Goldberg in her liner notes dedicates the album to her father, a music lover whose passion has been fruitfully infectious.

The final entry in the program, Schubert’s beloved Serenade (Ständchen) in the Liszt arrangement. Taken from the cycle of songs assembled as his “Swan-Songs,” the piece, as rendered by Liszt’s harmonization and echo effects, achieves a shimmering sonority, suavely impassioned.

Pam Goldberg is greatly admired in the New York City area for what the biography in the program book calls her “entrepreneurial pursuits”-in particular, her founding of Classical Café and the Rite of Summer Music Festival, both aimed at expanding audiences by presenting classical music in new venues. As we’re reminded by this release -her third CD, although the first to be reviewed in Fanfare-she’s a first-rate pianist as well.

These are enormously attractive performances, well balanced vertically, lightly pedaled and slightly sec in tone, and rhythmically flexible in a way that’s responsive to the shape of the phrases but that never exaggerates and never calls attention to itself. Indeed, refusal to exaggerate might well be the disc’s primary hallmark. It’s not that Goldberg lowers the music’s profile (listen to the edge of the Sonata’s Scherzo) or that she homogenizes the character of its landscape (she does an excellent job of differentiating the spirit of each of the Impromptu’s variations). Nor, as is obvious from listening to the development in the Sonata’s first movement, does her playing lack sheer excitement. But in an age where Schubert is increasingly mined for Deep Statements, these performances stand out for their clarity and their directness of utterance. Yes, in her program notes, Goldberg points to the Sonata’s second movement as capturing Schubert “in his most desperate moments” and it would be impossible to miss the sense of grief in her performance. But she doesn’t seem to be aiming at the kind of inconsolable weariness we find, say, in Arrau’s bleak reading or the enigmatic shadows we get from Volodos. Those who find themselves increasingly fidgety during hyper-devout performances of Schubert’s piano music should find Goldberg’s readings refreshing.

To be sure, there are a few moments where the playing stiffens, a few passages where she rushes but they’re minor drawbacks on an impressive release. The Schubert-Liszt makes a welcome encore. Good sound, too. Warmly welcomed. Peter J. Rabinowitz

Four stars: Honest and forthright performances