Pianist Simone Dinnerstein performs on Wigmore Hall's London Pianoforte Series - 13 July 2012
Friday, July 13, 2012 at 12:38PM
Pianist Simone Dinnerstein
Wigmore Hall
London Pianoforte Series
Friday, 13 July 2012 at 7pm
Wigmore Hall | 36 Wigmore Street | London
Tickets: £15, £20, £25, £30 available by calling 020 7935 2141 or visiting www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
Concert Program:
Bach: French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816
Bach: Partita No. 2 in C Minor, BWV 826
Bach: English Suite No. 3 in G Minor, BWV 808
Bach: Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major, BWV 825
Simone Dinnerstein online: www.simonedinnerstein.com
Watch Simone Dinnerstein on CBS Sunday Morning: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/23/sunday/main7274692.shtml
LONDON—American pianist Simone Dinnerstein will perform on Friday, 13 July 2012 at 7pm at Wigmore Hall (36 Wigmore Street) as part of Wigmore’s London Pianoforte Series. The all-Bach programme includes the French Suite No. 5 in G Major and English Suite No. 3 in G Minor, which were featured on Dinnerstein’s first Sony Classical album Bach: A Strange Beauty. The concert will also include selections from her latest Sony Classical album, Something Almost Being Said: The Music of Bach and Schubert – Bach’s Partita No. 1 in B-flat Major and Partita No. 2 in C Minor. (Watch the music video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WY3Xnokd64)
Simone Dinnerstein has been called “a throwback to such high priestesses of music as Wanda Landowska and Myra Hess,” by Slate magazine, and praised by TIME for her “arresting freshness and subtlety.” Her latest album, Something Almost Being Said, ranked No. 2 on the US Billboard Classical Chart and made the Billboard Top Current Albums in all music genres in its first week on sale in January 2012. It 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. 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 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, Dinnerstein was featured on national television by CBS Sunday Morning in the US. She was the bestselling instrumentalist of 2011 on the US Billboard Classical Chart, and was also included in NPR's 2011 100 Favorite Songs from all genres.
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.
Dinnerstein made her London recital debut at the Wigmore Hall in October 2007, performing the Goldbergs. The Guardian raved, “In Dinnerstein’s accomplished hands there was no doubt that they are the province of the true musician rather than the mere pianist.” Of the album, The Times wrote, “An elegant, faintly wistful picture-painter, she finds an inventive ebb and flow within the confines of Bach’s delineated architecture.” The UK’s Piano magazine called the disc “precisely the kind of playing that the early 21st century most needs, infused as it is with a deep and pervasive sense of beauty and tenderness of heart which is often profoundly affecting.”
Dinnerstein's performance schedule has taken her around the world since her triumphant New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall in 2005 to venues including the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin Philharmonie, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and London's Wigmore Hall; festivals that include the Lincoln Center Mostly Mozart Festival, the Aspen, Verbier, and Ravinia festivals, and the Stuttgart Bach Festival; and performances with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Kristjan Järvi's Absolute Ensemble, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, and the Tokyo Symphony.
Dinnerstein has played concerts throughout the United States for the Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization dedicated to bringing classical music to non-traditional venues. Amongst the places she has played are nursing homes, schools and community centers. Most notably, she gave the first classical music performance in the Louisiana state prison system when she played at the Avoyelles Correctional Center. She also performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women, in a concert organized by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to coincide with her BSO debut.
Dedicated to her community, in 2009 Dinnerstein founded Neighborhood Classics, a concert series open to the public hosted by New York City public schools. The series features musicians Dinnerstein has met throughout her career, and raises funds for the schools. The musicians performing donate their time and talent to the program. Neighborhood Classics began at PS 321, the Brooklyn public elementary school that her son attends and where her husband teaches fifth grade. Artists who have performed on the series include Richard Stoltzman, Maya Beiser, Pablo Ziegler, and many more.
Dinnerstein is a graduate of The Juilliard School where she was a student of Peter Serkin. She was a winner of the Astral Artist National Auditions, and has twice received the Classical Recording Foundation Award. She also studied with Solomon Mikowsky at the Manhattan School of Music and in London with Maria Curcio.
Simone Dinnerstein (pronounced See-MOHN-uh DIN-ner-steen) lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son. She is managed by Tanja Dorn at IMG Artists and is a Sony Classical artist.
For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.
# # #
