Toronto pianist Stewart Goodyear is having a year, you might say, one that is building on a distinctive career in the international classical music scene.
Earlier in September, he played a well received performance at the BBC Proms with the Chineke! Orchestra. Along with Duke Ellington’s jazzy version of Tchaikovsky’s seminal The Nutcracker, and the composer’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony, Goodyear performed his own Callaloo, a suite for orchestra and piano that celebrates Caribbean culture.
His recording of Prokofiev’s 2nd and 3rd Concertos, along with the 7th Sonata, with Andrew Litton and the BBC Symphony Orchestra was released on Orchid Classics on September 6, the same day as the concert.
A star alumnus of the Royal Conservatory of Music, and its inaugural artist-in-residence, Goodyear has fashioned a busy performing and recording career.
His concert schedule is a full one. Just back after performances with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto no 3 with Music Director Otto Tausk, he’s off to Reading, then Wichita, and then Indianapolis to perform Gershwin’s iconic Rhapsody in Blue. That only covers the next three weeks.
In January 2025, he’ll be back in the UK to help the Chineke! Orchestra celebrate their 10th anniversary, and perform his own suite for orchestra, titled “Life, Life, Life”, a work commissioned by the Chineke! Foundation and dedicated to the memory of Stewart’s late mother.
We caught up with him to talk about recent projects.
Stewart Goodyear: The Interview
The BBC Proms appearance came as the result of an invitation. “Chineke! Orchestra and I collaborated many times,” Goodyear says. “We first recorded my suite entitled Callaloo in 2018.”
He calls it a “wonderful relationship”, one that spawned a tour of Callaloo in 2019 through the UK. He’s also performed the work with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and National Arts Centre Orchestra.
Stewart grew up listening to classical music, along with other genres. “Every composer broke the mold,” he says. Endless reinvention is part of what inspired him to become a composer as well as a pianist.
“It compelled me to find my own voice, and pay homage to my own background,” he says. That background is part British, and part Canadian, along with its Caribbean roots.
The concert was a high point in the life of the work. “An honour,” he calls it. “It was a wonderful, warm response. The audience went wild,” he adds. “Just performing in that space…” He recalls his first trip to the UK at age 13 with his mother and aunt, taking in several Proms concerts at the storied venue.
“There was just this electricity in the air,” he says. “To be at the receiving end of that was, at first, overwhelming.”
To get over the feeling, he says he took the advice of one of the members of Chineke!, which entailed going up to the highest seat of Albert Hall and looking down at the stage to gain perspective. It helped.
“It was just wonderful to feel their enthusiasm. What the audience gave me, I just gave back. It was probably the best, and the hottest performance of Callaloo.”
Chineke! Orchestra performs Goodyear’s suite for piano and orchestra Callaloo in 2019:
Prokofiev
The Prokofiev album, which debuted on the Classical Chartz at No. 8, has its roots during the pandemic a few years ago.
“During the pandemic, of course, a lot of reflection comes about.”
Goodyear began to go over his repertoire, reaching back to his favourite pieces from his days as a student at Juilliard. “Basically, I was in quarantine with my piano.”
Pieces he’d become attached to during his childhood listening to albums had come up early on his list of works to record. Earlier in his career, his discography had leaned into Beethoven. “My first love,” he says. Glenn Gould was another big inspiration, resulting in his album For Glenn Gould. The repertoire for that recording came from Gould’s first American recitals in the mid-1950s.
As he reached back into his musical past, he struck a chord with Prokofiev. “Prokofiev was definitely on the list,” he says. “It just felt like the right time for the recording. Prokofiev just felt like another composer who broke the mold.”
Other than the ubiquitous holiday Nutcrackers, Prokofiev has fallen somewhat out of favour with concert programmers these days. Goodyear points out the composer’s “irresistible flair, and drama that anyone can identify with”.
“Those spiky dissonances come out, but there’s also this incredible […] drama, humour, everything,” he says. “When I first learned the second concerto, I was a Curtis student.” As he tells the story, the presenter was looking for a rehearsal pianist for Yefim Bronfman to prepare for an upcoming concert. Stewart got a call from the dean, asking him if he could learn a concerto in five days as an opportunity to be the rehearsal pianist.
“As a teenager, knowing no fear […] I said, sure, let’s do that,” he laughs. “The composer just puts the performer through the wringer.”
He talks about the piece’s wide emotional range that swings from deep reflection to abject tragedy. “It’s almost like the piano is crying out,” he says. The intermezzo comes next, a spritely movement he believes may have inspired Danny Elfman’s original music for Beetlejuice. “Then the fourth is just an amazing epic of a finale.” Goodyear performed the 7th sonata often during his early recital years. An early influence, Prokofiev remains a favourite. “He definitely inspired me and the way I write for piano,” he says.
Diving deeply into the nuances of a composer’s sound until he can sweat it out of his pores is always an enjoyable part of the process of preparing to record. “It was a great pleasure,” he says.
“It’s a great honour to release this Prokofiev to the listening public. Three of my favourite Prokofiev pieces are on this album.”
What’s next, when it comes to recording? There are a lot of composers left to mine. “Exploring composers was something that I always wanted to do,” he says.
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