A Bold Variation

Simone Dinnerstein is a late bloomer. On the verge of thirty, the audition-phobic pianist had no management, few prospects, and was nearing her expiration date as an artist. The last thing anyone would have advised at this point in her career would be to record Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

But that’s exactly what Dinnerstein did. Unable to find a label interested in gambling on an unknown pianist playing a work defined by Glenn Gould’s iconic 1955 recording (arguably the most famous piano album since World War II), she recorded the Variations herself in 2005, financing the project with the help of family and friends. Later that year, she bankrolled her own Carnegie Hall debut—and was rewarded with a glowing review in The New York Times.

The album was picked up by Telarc in 2007, topped the classical charts, and was called the “runaway hit of the year” by The New Yorker. Even Oprah’s O magazine called it a “timeless, meditative, utterly audacious solo debut.”

Everyone likes an underdog, and the Frederic Chopin Society’s Mary Sigmond is no exception. “I get excited about an artist like this, who does her own thing and believes in herself against all odds, and finally someone takes note.”

Dinnerstein’s second CD, The Berlin Concert, was recorded live last year and will be reprised this month in a Chopin Society recital. Bach’s French Suite no. 5 in G Major is paired with Philip Lasser’s intricate and varied Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J. S. Bach and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 32 in C minor, op. 111, which Dinnerstein describes as looking back to Bach and looking ahead to jazz. Also on the program (but not on the album) is Schubert’s Four Impromptus, op. 90.

“All three works are densely layered, but also have a sense of freedom and directness of expression,” Dinnerstein wrote in her notes on the album. “Though they span almost 300 years, in many ways, to me, they each feel grounded in the present.” Nov. 16. Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul, 612-822-0123