Soloist with Wichita Symphony fell in love with Beethoven at age 3

Stewart Goodyear claims a fanaticism about Ludwig Van Beethoven that began when the pianist was 3 years old.

“Beethoven was the beginning for me,” Goodyear, who turns 42 this month, said in a phone interview.

One of his earliest memories was seeing a 13-record box set of Beethoven by pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy in a store and begging his mother to buy it.

“I started in the morning and by the time I knew it I was on the 13th LP,” he said. “I was riveted by the last 12 LPs I heard.”

By the time he was 8, the Canadian was performing in competitions and hearing the works live, exposing him to the piano concerti of Beethoven, at about the same time he picked up another Beethoven box set – all of the composer’s symphonies.

“This was another side of Beethoven I was introduced to,” he said. “I felt like with every body of work from the sonatas to the symphonies, I was hearing different sides of Beethoven, and the concertos were another side I was introduced to. I just became more and more intrigued as my journey went on.”

By age 13, he began performing the third concerto, and played the second the next year.

But Goodyear took a five-year Beethoven break, concentrating on learning the Beethoven repertoire rather than performing it, until he began at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he plowed through all 32 of Beethoven’s sonatas and took on all five concertos.

“I was just waiting for that exciting opportunity to perform all of them,” he said. “Every concerto to me was just so different. The surprises that Beethoven brings to each of them just surprised me so much.”

Although he has performed all five concertos in a weekend of performances before, once in Canada, Goodyear will take on the task again next weekend with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra. He will play the first through third concertos on Friday night, and the fourth and fifth in a matinee next Sunday.

The feat may sound familiar to Wichita Symphony patrons. A year ago, pianist Lise de la Salle performed all of the Rachmaninoff concertos in a single weekend but had not attempted the feat before.

Goodyear said he has no physical nor mental concerns about the stamina that it takes to perform all five concertos over three days.

He said he’s performing the pieces in numeric order, even though the second concerto was composed by Beethoven when the composer was in his early 20s.

Goodyear said he doesn’t have a preference of one concerto over another, either as a performer or a fan.

“They’re just so different,” he said. “I know there are musicians who have the fourth concerto very highly on their list because it’s just so innovative, but it’s the journey toward the fourth concerto that I find very exciting. How does Beethoven become more adventurous in his craft? That’s why I regard the first, second and third so highly.”

Goodyear does have an opinion on the most difficult to perform.

“I guess the most challenging is the fourth, because you have to bring poetry as well as defiance, innovation as well as classical restraint,” he said. “Both the soloist and the orchestra have to be on the same mindset. It’s a real collaboration of the minds that go on in the fourth concerto. It’s probably the most intimate of the concerti that Beethoven wrote.”

In the first concerto, Goodyear said, “Beethoven does it for me in the way he writes for the piano. There is such a joy that comes out in the first one. This is definitely a young man’s concerto. It’s a stadium concerto – he pulls out all the stops.

“The second one is like a salon concerto, and you’re into the operatic, very dramatic, dark world in the third concerto. It ends with a lot of virtuosity.

“The fourth concerto brings that intimacy again, and it prepares the audience for the big gesture that is the fifth concerto.”

The concertos were composed between 1795 and 1809, Goodyear said. By the time the fifth was written, Beethoven was nearly deaf.

The performance reunites Goodyear with the Wichita Symphony, where he was a soloist with Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concert No. 2” two years ago. He met up with Wichita Symphony personnel the following year at the Steinway production facility in New York as the symphony’s new grand piano was being constructed.

Goodyear said he feels a kinship pulling off the Beethoven feat with the Kansas orchestra.

“It’s just a joy to do it with the Wichita Symphony,” he said. “It’s one of the great highlights of my season.”

Beethoven: The complete piano concerts by Wichita Symphony Orchestra, with Stewart Goodyear

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21 (No. 1-3) and 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 23 (No. 4-5)

Where: Century II concert hall, 225 W. Douglas

Tickets: $25-$70, with student, military and senior discounts available. Tickets available through the symphony box office, 316-267-7658 or online at wichitasymphony.org