Simone Dinnerstein

[steve_m]

Has anyone ever heard of this pianist? She's friends with my uncle, and he's arranging for me to play for her.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/arts/music/30simo.html?ex=1173330000&en=7f894cd8cf98a357&ei=5070

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/arts/music/22simo.html?ex=1173330000&en=c93f6a69e748b30d&ei=5070

[minor9th]

I just bought her Goldberg Variations on Telarc, which I like very much. She plays several of the variations a lot slower and in a more romantic vein than most, but at least she imparts a little personality. I've only listened to it once...perhaps further listening will change my mind. Without question, though, the audio quality is superb.

[ramseytheii]

I also liked her performance of some of the variations, for the very reason that they aren't so breakneck and mechanical like people play them these days (COUGH COUGH MARTIN STADTFELD COUGH COUGH). 

We are so used to comparing everything with the Glenn Gould - and she brings that up in her interview - that it is easy to forget this is a piece that has inspired a lot of idiosyncratic recordings.  Gould's is probably at once the strangest and the most communicative, and also his life situation added a lot of mystique to those two studio performances, but I also recommend the recording by Tatiana Nikolaeva, the dedicatee of Shostakovich's preludes & fugues, who gives the Goldbergs a really beautiful, Romantic, idiosyncratic interpretation.  There are echoes of the Nikolaeva in the Donnersteine, though I don't know if she ever heard Nikolaeva's recording.

Walter Ramsey