SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations. Simone Dinnerstein (piano). Wigmore Hall, London. 23.10.2007. (ED)

Simone Dinnerstein’s recently released recording of the Goldberg Variations has been drawing a very favourable press (for example, see Musicweb’s review). This concert performance, also Dinnerstein’s London debut, pulled in a packed house.

Simone Dinnerstein is a pianist of remarkable technical accomplishment, who evidentially has steered her career slowly but surely to date. The Bach recording was made 18 months ago but  the fact that the same work should occupy much of her present recital schedule seems as much coincidence as promotional exercise. Having come to the concert without having heard the recording though.  I was prepared for anything to happen.

Almost immediately it became clear that this was not going to be a traversal of the Goldberg that would keep a Bach purist happy. The opening Aria emphasised its simplicity of structure through a broad tempo that sagged ever slower as it progressed. It would take some feat of musicianship and intellect to recover from that point. Recovery was achieved to a point later on, but at a cost.

Many of the ensuing thirty variations were taken somewhat slower than is the norm: the fourth seemed overly parsimonious in its approach, the fifth showed occasional imbalance between the left and right hands, the eighteenth was on the verge of plodding yet the twenty-second was robustly fingered – even if the tone was uninspiring. To leave the picture at this would be to gain only half an impression of Dinnerstein’s performance however. While momentarily suspect pedalling and occasional indistinct voicing of passages took away from the experience also, in the more upbeat variations Dinnerstein leapt on accents to bring Bach’s music vitally to life. Variation thirteen was brisk yet carefree and  twenty and twenty-two almost brash by comparison with much else in Dinnerstein’s conception.

For me, that is where the problem lay: with Dinnerstein’s overall conception of the work. She failed to make wholly logical sense of the sequencing of the contrasts within the overall framework. Only occasionally – variation twenty-three, for example – did a component part suggest an emotion greater than itself, in this case the emotion was bitterness.  To arrive at the Aria da capo which ends the work should surely be to sense that one has come full circle. For that to happen however, more components need to contribute towards the whole. None of this should suggest that Simone Dinnerstein had not thought through her approach: she had. Merely,  it points out the challenge that Bach still poses to a pianist even of some talent. That challenge, like the music itself, is everlasting.

Evan Dickerson

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