Dinnerstein excels in intelligent, thoughtful program for UChicago
UChicago Presents hosted pianist Simone Dinnerstein in her Hyde Park debut Friday night. The American keyboard artist, who came to international attention for her 2007 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, offered a program she called “Reflections,” which facilitates a conversation across centuries by pairing music of the high Baroque with 20th-century American works.
The result was a highly impressive and thought-provoking evening at the Logan Center that demonstrated musical continuities between eras one might not think would speak to each other so fluently.
Dinnerstein’s first half paired Rameau’s Gavotte and Six Doubles (“doubles” in this sense are essentially variations) with Philip Lasser’s Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J. S. Bach.
The pianist said of the Rameau that it is like one person trying on six different costumes, with the graceful Gavotte theme always discernible in the composer’s increasingly ornate treatment. Dinnerstein played with exquisite voicing and plumbed the contrasting moods of each double as their counterpoint grew progressively more elaborate. One laments that opportunities to hear Rameau (and his contemporary countryman Couperin) on the keyboard are so rare.
Lasser’s Variations, a 2002 score Dinnerstein has championed almost since it was written, were a genuine discovery. The New York composer takes Bach’s “Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott” chorale as a point of departure and manipulates it beyond recognition in a dazzling array of styles, without ever feeling like pastiche. The Lasser followed the Rameau without pause, and Dinnerstein characterized it as “12 different people alluding to the chorale.”
Bach’s chorale is undeniably solemn, but over the course of 20 minutes, we hear it reimagined as Brahms, Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Prokofiev, the blues and Broadway, at times shifting among these even within a single phrase. The result, remarkably, is a collective impression that is greater than the sum of its parts and constitutes an original musical voice. Dinnerstein performed Lasser’s work with a commitment and authority that evinced her decades living with the score.
The second half paired Bach’s 15 Sinfonias (a.k.a. the Three-Part Inventions) with music of Keith Jarrett. Dinnerstein described the Sinfonias as almost like poems, and she palpably conveyed their condensed, aphoristic expression. The pianist drew attention to the different mood of each key—inward D Minor, regal E-flat Major, sunny E Major, desolate F Minor, etc.—grounding her clear-eyed interpretation in the particular tonal feeling of each Sinfonia.
Keith Jarrett is one of America’s most storied pianists and composers. His Tokyo Encore was an improvised meditation following one of a series of concerts he gave in Tokyo in the fall of 1976. Having been improvised, there is no score for the work, but a number of pianists have transcribed it from the recording, and Dinnerstein performed Uwe Karcher’s arrangement on Friday.
A hypnotic ostinato runs through Jarrett’s flight of fancy, during which one can be unsure if one is hearing a Bach arioso or film noir jazz. Dinnerstein charted the work’s organic unfolding, fully attuned to its spontaneous origins, yet in a manner that maintained the dialogue with Bach’s more formal composition.
It felt somewhat odd to close the program with an encore and follow it with another, but Dinnerstein treated the audience to Philip Glass’s Mad Rush, in which an idée fixe of pulsating close harmonies returns repeatedly, alternating with ecstatic eruptions. An obsessive low note in the bass also recurs, like a troubling thought one can’t shake, and Dinnerstein charted Glass’ long arc before concluding the evening on that ominous pitch.
University of Chicago Presents hosts the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Wind Ensemble 7:30 p.m. April 17 at Mandel Hall. chicagopresents.uchicago.edu
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Posted Mar 28, 2026 at 9:42 am by David novak
Spot on! Mesmerizing.