The Dinnerstein Variations

Peter Burwasser on Classical

by Peter Burwasser

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Published: Oct 14, 2008

Just as the actor must share the artistic spotlight with the playwright, the classical musician has to duet with the composer. Painters and poets, for example, need not engage in such a collaboration, nor, for that matter, do rock and jazz musicians playing original material.

In music that begs for a personal approach, such as Liszt or Schumann, there is always the danger for a performer to cross a line and bring more of themselves to the music than the composer, but that danger exists, in an understated way, in the more restrained works of Mozart and Bach, as well.

The best teachers of the modern era have schooled several generations of musicians to have an ingrained sense of respect for the composer. Still, every now and again an interesting musician comes along to test the model. I am not talking about guys like Nigel Kennedy, the British violinist who sports a Mohawk and rips the sleeves off his tuxedo jacket. When you close your eyes, Kennedy treats us to playing with a poise and classical beauty that places him at the forefront of his fiddler colleagues. No, the rabble-rousers work their mischief in more subtle ways. Case in point: pianist Simone Dinnerstein, a Brooklyn native who snuck up on the scene with a self-produced album of Bach's "Goldberg Variations" (since picked up by the Telarc label). Bach left little indication for tempo and dynamics in his music, and so it is up to the performer to make those choices. Nevertheless, musicians tend to a sort of consensus about these matters, based on experience with the idiom, and the aid of scholars. In her Bach, Dinnerstein dances along some of those borders. Ultimately, the listener must decide if her choices are self-indulgent, or appropriately and respectfully true to the music as intended by Bach.

Philadelphians will have the chance to make that call live, when Dinnerstein appears with the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society on Oct. 24, playing pieces from her second Telarc CD. The program will include more Bach, and two colossal works from the solo piano literature, Beethoven's last piano sonata, the opus 111, and the superb but rarely heard Variations by Copland. So far, Dinnerstein has emerged as a wonderfully natural, smart and slightly dangerous musician. Those are qualities that could lead her in several different ways; she will need to keep a tight grip on the steering wheel.

(p_burwasser@citypaper.net)

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