Richard Goode’s music-making speaks of a sublime connection with the composers which inspires critics around the world to utter such praise as “you’d swear the composer himself was at the keyboard, expressing musical thoughts that had just come into his head.” The American pianist’s tremendous emotional power, depth and expressiveness can be heard in recitals, chamber and orchestral collaborations around the world, as well as in a series of highly acclaimed Nonesuch recordings, including the recent Nonesuch release of the Complete Beethoven Concerti.

Mr. Goode opens the 2009-2010 season with Ivan Fischer and the Cleveland Orchestra, followed by an extensive tour of the U.S. and Europe. Cities on the U.S. tour include Palm Beach, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, and San Francisco; European performances take place in Copenhagen, Schwetzingen, Cologne, and Dresden, to name a few. Mr. Goode also visits Philadelphia, Boston, and New York in collaborative performances with pianist Jonathan Biss for programs of piano duos by Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Stravinsky, and Debussy.

Over the past seasons, Mr. Goode was honored for his contributions to music with the first ever Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance in 2006, which culminated in a residency at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL for the past two years. His most recent season included performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Herbert Blomstedt and the Cleveland Orchestra with conductor Ivan Fischer. Carnegie Hall featured Richard Goode in an ‘engrossing’ (NY Times) eight-event Perspectives, and Mr. Goode was invited to hold master classes at the City’s three leading conservatories – Juilliard, Manhattan and Mannes – and to give two illustrated talks on his Perspectives repertoire at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His orchestral appearances included the Boston Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

Mr. 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 include two significant additions to his extensive discography, both on Nonesuch: a collection of Mozart sonatas and short pieces, as well as a recital disc with Dawn Upshaw. Mr. Goode has made more than two-dozen recordings, including Mozart Concerti with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas, the complete Partitas by J.S. Bach, most recently a recording of Mozart Piano sonatas, and chamber and solo works of Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, and George Perle. Mr. Goode is the first American-born pianist to have recorded the complete Beethoven Sonatas, which were nominated for a 1994 Grammy Award.

A native of New York, Richard Goode studied with Elvira Szigeti and Claude Frank, with Nadia Reisenberg at the Mannes College of Music and with Rudolf Serkin at the Curtis Institute. He has won many prizes, including the Young Concert Artists Award, First Prize in the Clara Haskil Competition, the Avery Fisher Prize, and a Grammy Award with clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. His remarkable interpretations of Beethoven came to national attention when he played all five concerti with the Baltimore Symphony under David Zinman, and when he performed the complete cycle of sonatas at New York’s 92nd Street Y and Kansas City’s Folly Theater. For the New York Times, the cycle was among the season’s most important and memorable events. Subsequent performances around the country were similarly triumphant.

Richard Goode has appeared with many of the world’s greatest orchestras, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Ozawa, the Chicago Symphony under Eschenbach, the Cleveland Orchestra under Zinman, the San Francisco Symphony under Blomstedt, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester under Ashkenazy, and the BBC Symphony under Belohlavek at the London Proms. He has also appeared with the Orchestre de Paris and Ivan Fischer, and toured with Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra, as well as making his Musikverein debut with the Vienna Symphony. He has been heard throughout Germany in sold-out concerts with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields under Sir Neville Marriner.

Mr. Goode serves with Mitsuko Uchida as co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Marlboro, Vermont. He is married to the violinist Marcia Weinfeld, and, when the Goodes are not on tour (with each new city offering the chance to visit a new or favorite bookstore), they and their collection of some 5,000 volumes live in New York City.