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.

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

Goldberg’s rendering of the complex impromptu is so clearly articulated as to allow even a casual listener to hear and understand it easily. She also moves comfortably through the most difficult passages of the sonata before she ends her program with Standchen, which becomes her de facto encore. I am sure you will be delighted after putting this disc on your stereo to allow Goldberg to play her intimate mini-concert for you.

Schubert: Piano Sonata No.20, D.959; Impromptu, Op.142, No.3; Schubert/Liszt: Ständchen (“Schwanengesang”)

Here there is something knitting the material together, since Goldberg says her 2017 recording of these works occurred at a time in her life when they had special meaning for her. That gives a personalized gloss to interpretations that are, in and of themselves, well-thought-out and well-balanced. The major work here is the A major Piano Sonata No. 20, Schubert’s penultimate sonata for the instrument. The work mixes traditional forms with strongly contrasting melodic material, and includes in its moderately slow second movement (marked Andantino) considerable chromaticism within a fantasia-like presentation. Goldberg’s playing is very fine, if sometimes a bit tentative in the most-intense portions of the sonata.

The lyricism of the concluding Rondo comes through to especially good effect, with the sense of this movement providing a pleasant emotional parallel to the Andantino. This is the most cyclical of Schubert’s last three sonatas, and if there is a weakness in Goldberg’s performance, it is that this cyclicality is not made especially apparent: she treats each movement more-or-less independently, which gives each its full due at the expense of a close connection among all four. The Impromptu, Op. 142, No. 3, seems in some ways to fit Goldberg’s temperament better. This is a genuinely lovely performance, delicate and well-balanced, emotive without ever becoming cloying. The theme-and-variations pattern is clear (with the theme itself sounding like one from Rosamunde); the ornamentation of the variations has clarity and grace; and Goldberg’s performance whets the appetite for hearing how she would play the three other Op. 142 Impromptus.

The CD concludes with Liszt’s arrangement of Ständchen, the fourth piece from Schwanengesang and, in the original, the protagonist’s plea for his lover to make him happy. Liszt actually set the entire song cycle for piano, albeit in an order of his own, and his changes in the piano texture replaced the original verbal elements of the songs with a kind of keyboard commentary on the material. Hearing a single one of these 14 pieces as an encore removes any sense of context, but Goldberg seems mostly concerned with being evocative of the underlying emotional expressiveness of the music, playing it with just the right mixture of wistfulness and intensity.

As a whole, this CD produces a sense of lyrical engagement with an overlay of a kind of eloquent fragility – an effect that fits the shorter works better than the sonata, although Goldberg’s reading of the more-extended piece also has much to recommend it.

Mark J. Estren

But that’s exactly what happened as I listened at last to Goldberg’s interpretation. From the first A-Major chord to the decisive final notes in the same key, Goldberg plays this difficult work with an intermingled blend of intelligence and elegance, technical skill and emotional depth. Goldberg realizes that Schubert is the fulcrum on which classicism and romanticism pivot. Her reading swings more to the classical style, with clarity, crisp attacks and strict adherence to the dictates of the score. Yet within this structure, she is able to release the flow of music from its captivity in form and structure. By the end of the opening “Allegro”, I paid less attention to the conventions of a more classical approach and instead became immersed in Schubert’s holistic vision, his quirky harmonic shifts, and serendipitous rhythms.

This was especially true in the second movement “Andantino”, a kind of swaying barcarolle. Its treble voice of ultra-simplicity overlies a bass line which cushions the melody as two cupped hands might embrace a small bird. Goldberg effortlessly transitions to a flock of 32nd notes which patters on for more than a page of the score. In conclusion to the second movement, Goldberg unrolls a sequence of triads which tiptoes into a triple-p conclusion. No less wondrous is Schubert’s writing and Goldberg’s articulation in the final two movements.

The first work on this album was less than a fitting prelude to the marvels of the Sonata. Although Goldberg’s instrument (a Steinway B 1978) sounded fine in the larger work, it had a tinny and metallic ring in Schubert’s Impromptu in B-Flat major, D. 935. In this shorter selection, Schubert could have been played with more abandon and warmth, in less of a clipped and understated style.

The album concluded with the Schubert-Liszt Ständchen in a charming performance by the featured artist. But it is clearly the sonata that is the star of this production. In it, Goldberg wields impeccable technique and insightful intelligence to give us an original version of this masterwork, filled with wonder and truth.

Linda Holt