Capturing the essence of one of Tchaikovsky’s most colorful scores on a single instrument might seem like a tough nut to crack. But it was a prerequisite for pianist Stewart Goodyear if he was going to undertake something as ambitious as “The Nutcracker.”

“I first transcribed the march for the CBC in Toronto, and I was delighted by the experience,” he says. “And then I looked at the entire full score to see if it would be just as pianistic, and to my happiness it was. It took me two years just going through the score, because I wanted to be very faithful to everything that Tchaikovsky wrote.”

His 2015 recording of “The Nutcracker,” issued by Steinway & Sons, was selected by the New York Times as one of the best classical music recordings of the year. Now, like a Herr Drosselmeyer of the keyboard, Goodyear will unpack his portmanteau of musical enchantments at McCarter Theatre Center tonight at 8 p.m.

As luck would have it, McCarter will also be collaborating with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra tonight at 7:30 p.m. George Manahan will conduct members of the orchestra and the Montclair State University Singers in Handel’s holiday juggernaut, “Messiah,” across town at Richardson Auditorium. Soloists will include Patricia Schuman, soprano; Mary Phillips, mezzo-soprano; Ryan MacPherson, tenor; David Pittsinger, bass-baritone.

Music-lovers will have the option of enjoying Handel’s monumental rendering of the life of Christ, deployed by chorus and orchestra, or the more secular pleasures of Tchaikovsky’s confectionary ballet expressed intimately on a single instrument.

Read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/12/classical_music_stewart_goodye.html