Franz Schubert Portrit by Franz Eybl, 1827

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January 29, 2015 The American pianist Simone Dinnerstein has given the world some highly pleasurable recordings, most notably the splendid account of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations that first brought her wide notice (and often provides the soundtrack for my walks).  Visiting from her Brooklyn home, she made her first San Antonio appearance in a recital for the Tuesday Musical Club, Jan. 27 in Laurel Heights United Methodist Church. Her program was ambitious. The centerpiece, very much in her baroque wheelhouse, was Bach’s French Suite in G. Only slightly less engaging

Simone Dinnerstein; New York Woodwind Quintet

 was Robert Schumann’s “Scenes of Childhood,” in which she proved to be a Romantic interpreter of a high order. She closed with Franz Schubert’s valedictory Sonata in B-flat, D. 960, a recent addition to her repertoire and, alas, not yet fully cooked. Her Bach was a marvel of highly personal shaping, impeccable technique and emphatic diction. She took a tornado tempo in the Courante — it seemed to end several seconds before it began — while still taking care to voice the left and right hands ideally. She brought deep feeling to the Sarabande, and each of its utterances had its own specific weight and meaning. Even the trills and other ornamental figures conveyed a specific point, not merely decorative purpose. The Loure had an uncommonly exploratory feeling. The final Gigue sparkled.  The Schumann, a set of 13 brief pieces suggestive of childhood memories,  opened with a lovely “Of Foreign Lands and Peoples,” generously shaped and played with a fine sense of line. Ms. Dinnerstein may have used a shade too much rubato here and there — notably in the second piece, “A Curious Story,” where the tempo play vitiated the rhythmic punch — but on the whole it seemed stylistically apt. In the famous “Traumerei,” she took a very patient tempo, but the line never sagged. She didn’t quite convey the supple rhythms of the 10th piece, “Almost Too Serious.”  Schubert composed his last piano sonata only a few weeks  before his death in 1828, at age 31. It is a profoundly  affecting work — the first movement's feeling of serene  acceptance interrupted by bass trills like shivers of terror;  the andante sostenuto’s ghostly processional, which always  reminds me of the final scene in Ingmar Bergman’s “The  Seventh Seal”; the limping, hobbled gait of the scherzo; the  finale’s oblivious, almost mechanical cheerfulness  punctured by violent, clamorous protest. In remarks to the audience, Ms. Dinnerstein correctly  noted that the spirit of dance suffuses Schubert’s sonatas,  certainly including the B-flat. Curiously, her performance  evaded the chief implication of the idea of dance — a  rhythmic groove based in the counterpoised momentum  and resistance of the human body in ritualized movement.   The problem with Ms. Dinnerstein's interpretation was an  excess of, well, interpretation — so much pushing and  pulling of the tempo, especially in the andante sostenuto,   that the underlying groove did not have a chance to fully  express itself and bear the listener on its ecstatic wave. There were other problems, as well, probably related to her short experience with the work — voicings sometimes were not clear enough, and in a couple of places the wheels briefly lost contact with the tracks.  But Ms. Dnnerstein is an immensely able and intelligent musician. It will be interesting to hear what she does with this sonata in a year’s time. Lingering effects of a bad cold (or flu, or cedar fever, or whatever) forced an early exit from the New York Woodwind Quintet’s concert for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society, Jan 25 in Temple Beth-El.  Happily, the main attractions (for me) came in the first half, with Elliott Carter’s Quintet of 1948 and the Quintet, Op. 52, of Theodor Blumer.  Carter’s Quintet represents an advanced stage of his early neoclassical style, before the development of his signature “metric modulation” and his quasi-serial harmonic path.  The piece is lively, witty and contrapuntally complex, and it sounded completely fresh in the New Yorkers’ crisp, elegant, spirited performance.  Blumer’s Quintet had appeared on an Olmos Ensemble concert just a few months earlier, but it was nice to hear it again. Curiously, the influence of Richard Strauss, so evident in the Olmos performance, seemed muted in the New Yorkers' account, which brought out a more Mendelssohnian delicacy. William Purvis on horn made a wonderfully impressive showing in his elaborate solos in the playful, dashing finale. His colleagues, all top-shelf musicians with international reputations, were Carol Wincenc (flute), Stephen Taylor (oboe), Charles Neidich (clarinet) and Marc Goldberg (bassoon).  Mike Greenberg    

An invasion of New Yorkers

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Simone DinnersteinPhoto: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

New York Woodwind QuintetPhoto: Christian Steiner

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