Pianist Simone Dinnerstein Performs As Soloist In Philip Glass's TIROL Concerto For Piano And Orchestra With The Brooklyn Orchestra

GRAMMY-nominated pianist Simone Dinnerstein, who is described by The Washington Post as, “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity,” will be the featured soloist in Philip Glass's “Tirol” Piano Concerto (Piano Concerto No. 1) in a performance with the Brooklyn Orchestra conducted by Olivier Glissant, on Monday, November 27, 2023 at 7:30pm at Roulette Intermedium (509 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn).

This will be the Brooklyn native's first performance at the venue. Glass's “Tirol” Piano Concerto, composed in 2000, has not been played in New York in 20 years. The concert will also include the New York premiere of Glass's Symphony No. 14 (“Liechtenstein Suite”), composed in 2020 for the LGT Young Soloists, which gave the world premiere in 2021 at the Royal College of Music in London.

 

Simone Dinnerstein is heralded for her distinctive musical voice and is becoming known for her interpretations of Philip Glass's music. She recorded and extensively performed his Piano Concerto No. 3, which he wrote for her in 2017, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. NPR reported of her recording of the piece, “Dinnerstein's creamy tone and elastic phrasing gives the music an air of Schubertian warmth and wistfulness.” The Washington Post writes of her interpretation of Mad Rush, “The vast architecture of Glass's Mad Rush was shot through with ever-changing light, creating a hypnotic effect with a delicate symbiosis of the physical and spiritual.”

 

Dinnerstein began performing Glass's “Tirol” Piano Concerto No. 1 earlier this year. The seldom-performed work is based on melody fragments of traditional Austrian Volkslied, or folk music, in the Tyrolean tradition. It was commissioned by Festival Klangspuren and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in 2000. Dinnerstein says of the piece, “The second movement of the ‘Tirol' is what first drew me to it. Built almost as a set of variations, the sound is lush and pulsating, and its mood relates to his Symphony No 3 for strings. I love the play between intense lyricism and a feeling of austerity, so reminiscent of Schubert's writing.”

 

The Brooklyn Orchestra is a symphonic ensemble dedicated to new music, striving to focus on contemporary composers. Created in 2015 by composer/conductor Olivier Glissant, the group was conceived to fuse genres of music that rarely meet on the classical stage and to bring music from multiple cultures to the orchestral repertoire, in an effort to make symphonic music accessible to a wider and more diverse audience.

 

About Simone Dinnerstein: Simone Dinnerstein first came to wider public attention in 2007 through her recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, reflecting an aesthetic that was both deeply rooted in the score and profoundly idiosyncratic. She is, wrote The New York Times, “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation.” Since then, she has played with orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Montreal Symphony Orchestra to the London Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale Rai. She has performed in venues from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Konzerthaus, Seoul Arts Center and Sydney Opera House. She has made thirteen albums, all of which topped the Billboard charts. During the pandemic she recorded three albums which form a trilogy: A Character of Quiet, An American Mosaic, and Undersong. An American Mosaic was nominated for a Grammy.

 

In recent years, Dinnerstein has created projects that express her broad musical interests. She gave the world premiere of The Eye Is the First Circle at Montclair State University, the first multi-media production she conceived, created, and directed, which uses as source materials her father Simon Dinnerstein's painting The Fulbright Triptych and Charles Ives's Piano Sonata No. 2. She premiered Richard Danielpour's An American Mosaic, a tribute to those affected by the pandemic, in a performance on multiple pianos throughout Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery. Following her recording Mozart in Havana, she brought the Havana Lyceum Orchestra from Cuba to the U.S. for the first time, performing eleven concerts. Philip Glass composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 for her, co-commissioned by twelve orchestras. Working with Renée Fleming and the Emerson String Quartet, she premiered André Previn and Tom Stoppard's Penelope at the Tanglewood, Ravinia and Aspen music festivals, and performed it at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and presented by LA Opera. Dinnerstein has also created her own ensemble, Baroklyn, which she directs. The Washington Post comments, “it is Dinnerstein's unreserved identification with every note she plays that makes her performance so spellbinding.” In a world where music is everywhere, she hopes that it can still be transformative.

 

For more information, please visit www.simonedinnerstein.com.

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