Today at noon the Meany Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Washington in Seattle began one week of streaming a piano recital by Simone Dinnerstein. These streamed events are being offered through the Meany On Screen series of performances, and a Web page has now been enabled to stream the concert through Vimeo. There is no charge for admission, but those wishing to view the offering will be required to provide an electronic mail address to access the streaming source.
This is Dinnerstein’s latest performance based on her Orange Mountain Music album A Character of Quiet, which consists of three of Philip Glass’ études (numbers 16, 6, and 2) serving as an “overture” to Franz Schubert’s final piano sonata, D. 960 in B-flat major. The Meany On Screen video begins with the first two of these études followed by the Schubert sonata in its entirety. The video was recorded in Dinnerstein’s home in Brooklyn; and it seems to have taken place in parallel with the audio recording for the album, the entire project being produced by Adam Abeshouse.
Readers probably know by now that I have had a series of encounters with Dinnerstein’s performances since I first wrote about the album in September of 2020. The fact is that, however familiar the music may have become, I keep encountering new perspectives. On this occasion I found myself dwelling on the “turn” figure, which is illustrated on the Wikipedia page for musical ornaments as follows:
The interpretation of the turn symbol is then shown as follows:
In other words the pattern amounts to up-back-down-back.
The earliest documentation of such ornaments can probably be found in a 1535 treatise by Silvestro Ganassi dal Fontego; but one of the most expressive uses of the turn can be found in the cor anglais solo that opens the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s “symphony” “Das Lied von der Erde” (the song of the earth). That same figure opens Glass’ sixteenth étude, beginning one of the darker studies in Glass’ collection. Given that Mahler’s movement is on a vast durational scale, roughly equal to that of all five of the preceding movements, and given that such extended durations also figure in Schubert’s sonata (on the scale of both individual movements and the entire sonata), I find it difficult to avoid thinking of Mahler as a “way station” between Schubert and Glass.
Setting personal impressions aside, I have to say that the major factor in extending my familiarity of Dinnerstein’s performance is that of Abeshouse’s camera work. His inventiveness in working with an overhead shot of the keyboard, a face-forward view of Dinnerstein seen through the “arch” of the piano lid, and the familiar “side shot” giving a full-body account of her keyboard work facilitates listener awareness of the many nuances in her execution, not only in the Schubert sonata but also in both of the Glass études. As was the case with the video made for her Live from Columbia recital this past December, Abeshouse’s video provides more insight into the nature of Dinnerstein’s approach to performance than one would experience when sitting in the audience for a recital offering.
Perhaps lockdown conditions have introduced us to a new perspective on what it means to be an audience; and, even after we return to the “physical world,” we may not wish to depart entirely from the virtual, having discovered the insights it can offer.
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