Simone Dinnerstein to Play the Miller Theatre, 2/2
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein will perform on Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 8pm, presented by Miller Theatre at Columbia University (2960 Broadway, at 116th Street, NYC) in a concert entitled Bach and the Romantics as part of Miller's popular Bach and the Baroque series. The recital, which is Ms. Dinnerstein's first at Miller Theatre, follows the January 31 release of her new Sony Classical album, Something Almost Being Said: The Music of Bach and Schubert. Her program at Miller Theatre includes Chopin's Nocturne No. 8 in D-flat Major, Op. 27; New York-based composer Daniel Felsenfeld's The Cohen Variations in its New York premiere (inspired by the music of Leonard Cohen and commissioned by Ms. Dinnerstein); and Brahms' Intermezzo, Op. 118, No. 2 in A. The program also includes selections from Something Almost Being Said – Bach's Partita No. 2 in C Minor; Schubert's Four Impromptus, Op. 90; Bach's Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major. (Promotional CDs are available upon request. Watch the music video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WY3Xnokd64)
Ms. Dinnerstein's new album, Something Almost Being Said, was recorded at the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York by Grammy-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. The album's title is taken from English poet Philip Larkin's poem, The Trees. Ms. Dinnerstein says of the new album, and its title, "Bach and Schubert, to my ears, share a distinctive quality. Their non-vocal music has a powerful narrative, a vocal element. The effect is that of wordless voices singing textless melodies. Bach and Schubert's melodic lines are so fluent, so expressive, and so minutely inflected that they sound as though they might at any moment burst suddenly into speech. They sound like something almost being said."
Something Almost Being Said follows the release of Ms. Dinnerstein's 2011 album, Bach: A Strange Beauty, which topped the Billboard Classical Chart and is one of the few classical albums to make the Billboard Top 200 (best sellers in all music genres). The San Francisco Chronicle called Bach: A Strange Beauty "unadorned but profound bliss," and The Washington Post raved, "Dinnerstein's readings may be said to plumb these works' genuine depths . . . poised, elegant, wonderfully played." In conjunction with the album's release, Ms.Dinnerstein was featured on national television by CBS Sunday Morning.
Ms. Dinnerstein has been called "a throwback to such high priestesses of music as Wanda Landowska and Myra Hess," by Slatemagazine, and praised by TIME for her "arresting freshness and subtlety." The New York-based pianist gained an international following because of the remarkable success of her recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, which she raised the funds to record. Released in 2007 on Telarc, it ranked No. 1 on the US Billboard Classical Chart in its first week of sales and was named to many "Best of 2007" lists including those of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. Her follow-up album,The Berlin Concert, also gained the No. 1 spot on the Chart.
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