Watching, and listening, to Simone Dinnerstein perform J.S. Bach?s Goldberg Variations for 80 non-stop minutes packs in more emotion and action than any summer blockbuster you likely sat through this year.
Dinnerstein plays in Baltimore as critics? prophecies come true and her recording of Bach?s Goldberg Variations reaches number one on Billboard?s classical music chart.
“It?s very exciting to have a superb pianist choose a very difficult, almost sacred piece, that everybody always wants to hear again and again,” said Henry Wong, owner of An Die Musik Live where Dinnerstein will perform Goldberg Variations.
Like a gripping novel, “you just need to know the end of Variations,” Wong added. “You don?t say let me listen to one movement and come back later. You have to hear it in its entirety.”
Dinnerstein taught herself Goldberg Variations in 2001 when she was pregnant, she said. “I wanted to learn something that was going to reflect the journey that I was going through. It?s an incredibly beautiful and complex piece, and a real thrill to play.”
Hearing Goldberg Variations live is an intense experience.
Audiences should listen for the circular aspects in Variations and Bach?s interest in symmetry, Dinnerstein pointed out. Variations begins with an aria full of enchanting melodies before beginning 30 variations with exactly 32 measures in each. Every third variation is a canon, or a round.
Bach?s composition “sounds like many different instruments,” said Dinnerstein who has performed at prestigious concerts halls in Paris, Berlin, London, Philadelphia, New York and Copenhagen.
Since 1996, Dinnerstein has also taken the stage at non-traditional venues across the country for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing classical music to places such as nursing homes, schools and community centers.
