Editor Reviews:

Album Description:
Dinnerstein's Goldberg Variations was recorded in the neoclassic auditorium of the Academy of Arts and Letters in New York in March 2005. The piano she plays, a 1903 Hamburg Steinway model D concert grand, was originally owned by the town council of Hull, in Northeast England. During World War II, Hull was extensively bombed and the town hall in which the piano was housed was severely damaged. The piano, however, survived intact and was used in a series of concerts after the war to restore Hull's spirit. In 2002, it was restored by Klavierhaus in New York City, in time to be used at the re-opening of the World Trade Center's Winter Garden, playing the same role as it had in Hull over fifty years earlier.

Amazon.com:
This is destined to be one of the best-remembered and significant classical releases of 2007. Simone (pronounced "See-mo-nuh") Dinnerstein has recently been attracting lots of media attention, from Oprah’s magazine to The New York Times. Within a classical-music circuit increasingly unwilling to take artistic risks, hers has been the rare success story. The 30-something pianist (a former student of Peter Serkin), backing herself, wowed critics with some notable concerts and eventually secured the support of a major label to release a self-produced recording Dinnerstein had made in March 2005. This Telarc account of the Goldberg Variations thus marks her solo debut CD (following some earlier collaborations with cellist Zuill Bailey on the Delos label). For once, the publicity is trying to keep up with the musical achievement--rather than the other way around.

Dinnerstein's seriousness of purpose is immediately obvious from her choice of the Bach masterpiece to make her mark. With the specter of Glenn Gould's own epoch-making 1955 debut playing the same work—not to mention a vast catalog of competing interpretations—Dinnerstein is nothing if not bold. But what's really extraordinary here is the liberating sense she conveys of its not having all been said before—without resorting to tiresome idiosyncrasies to stand apart from the crowd. Her remarkably deliberate way with the opening aria is unusual, to be sure. But it establishes the stakes for what will follow, where Dinnerstein's thoughtfulness and spectacular clarity seem to discover new facets at every turn. Her pianism embraces a prismatic array of touches, whether the feathery lightness of Variation 5, the burbling rhythms of Variation 14, or the tragic weight of the "black pearl" Variation 25. The cumulative effect is exhilarating, intensely moving, and an affirmation of the Goldbergs' infinite variety. --Thomas May

Rating : - Goldberg Variations, Pregnant with Meaning

Simone Dinnerstein is in the newspapers for her just released recording of the Goldberg Variations. Anne Midgette writes in the New York Times ("How Do You Move a Career Into High Gear? By Breaking the Rules") about Mrs. Dinnerstein's unusual path to pianistic glory and fame - from which she was so far removed until the then 32-year old rented out Weill Hall and gave an audacious debut with the Goldberg Variations. The sold-out recital was a great success, not the least because several critics attended and found themselves impressed. A recording of the Goldberg Variations she had produced and raised the money for now found its way to Telarc who have just released it to (and with) much fanfare. Mrs. Dinnerstein is now an IMG artist and her concert calender solidly booked. The times of frustrating and dispiriting `giglets' playing at nursing homes and retirement communities (now very benevolently billed as her "commit[ment] to broadening the reach of classical music") is over.

Alas, it might not be quite as unique as it is made out to be: Martin Stadtfeld, a young German pianist who styles himself a bit too much as a European Glenn Gould (or is that Sony's doing?), also chose to record the Goldberg Variations on his own, sent the result off to different labels and was picked up by Sony. He, too, launched his career that way. Stadtfeld and his positively wacky approach differs, wilfully, from all others and makes Gould's recording seem bourgeois.

Firstly: Ignore Dinnerstein's picture-heavy liner notes - Simone Dinnerstein's three paragraphs about the Goldberg Variations are astonishing only for their concentration of cliché per square inch. I summarize: The Goldberg Variations are an astoundingly inventive and tremendously expressive, profoundly structured and diversely distinctive, uniquely powerful and remarkably varied set of Variations.
Ghost writing credits go to Jack Handey from Saturday Night Live.

Thankfully she plays nothing like she writes.

Though Mrs. Dinnerstein immersed herself in Glenn Gould's 1955 recording and of the GV, she does not end up sounding like him at all. Compare her Aria at 539" to Gould's blazing, repeat-free 152". She should have taken on one little touch that hardly anyone but Gould employs, though: a minor stroke of genius in the Aria where the arpeggiated chord in bar 11 is not played, as standard, from bottom to top but top to bottom. That little downward trickle is brilliant and most ears that have heard it like that will want it no other way. She stretches the chord out further and very softly plays it conventionally from bottom to top - almost a `third', still different way to do it.

Patient and gently moving in the Aria, she (ever duly repeat-observing) takes all the time she needs to indulge in every note. If she were taking a walk in the neighborhood instead, she'd be seen smelling every last rose on the way. And then when she gets to that arpeggiated chord a second time, lest the repeat be a carbon copy of what had come before, she takes it, just as softly, from top to bottom. Lovely.

She displays fine speeds in the faster Variations, though still nothing compared to Gould's "Speed Demon" approach (his words). Every note has its accentuation, there is a purpose and flow in her playing, the sound of her touch on the restored 1902 Steinway D is warm and round, not unlike Murray Perahia's - if not always as nuanced and even in the upper register. And in in the slow Variations she really slows it down so that every note of every flourish stands individually and discernibly in the air for a little while. There is a reverential quality to much of it; a caressing somewhere between radiant (Variation 9) and lugubrious (Variation 27), church (Variations 6 and 29) and, well..., retirement community (Variation 22).

A (dis)advantageous quality of Bach's music - and the Goldberg Variations in particular - is that you can pull it apart about as much as you want and it will still sound good, the lines will still be there. There are moments where Simone Dinnerstein plays in the style an amateur Goldberg enthusiast might want to, if only he or she had her abilities: The result is probably all-too-indulgent for some and just perfect for others... at any rate bound to be a very personal choice. The ever present revelry has me miss the incredible forward momentum that a tighter approach - for example Yevgeny Koroliov's - can achieve in the Variations.

Variations Nos. 5 and 26 impressively put beyond doubt that Mrs. Dinnerstein might play the way she does for lack of nimble enough fingers. She presents an immaculate technique, speeds that nearly rival Gould; and with time to spare to give the different lines character and color.

The raves that can be read ([...], New York Times et al.) might go a little far in their comparisons to Glenn Gould, Wanda Landowska, and Dame Myra Hess; noting Schumanesque touches in one Variation, Debussy or Ravel in another. Claims more dubious still than insisting on the presence of wild raspberry, essence of sun-dried leather, and hints of nutmeg in a young merlot. But anyone who will give this release more than a cynical rolling of the eyes (tempting, admittedly) will find out that it is holding the #1 classical spot on iTunes and #3 overall music spot on Amazon.com for a much better reason than just being an all-American feel-good dream story. There are tons of flavors in that wine. If any comparison were necessary, I'd liken her Variations to Daniel Barenboim's broad rendition. (He incidentally takes that above mentioned arpeggiated chord both ways, too - first from the top, then the bottom in the repeat.)

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[Rating this disc is terribly difficult. It will be 5 stars to many and 3 stars to many others. (The playing is too good and the recording too well engineered to deserve less, no matter how much one disagrees with S.D's stylistic choices.) My personal taste would be 3 1/2 - I rounded up arbitrarily, not because I incline more toward four than three stars). My recommendation, if her style - as described - sounds appealing and you don't have more than one recording of these works yet, would be Murray Perahia's disc. Good as Dinnerstein's GV recording is, there's no doubt that it has been overrated - in good part because the "story" behind it was so appealing to journalists.]