Sarah Grunstein | A piano recital
Thursday, September 22, 2022 | Utzon Room, Sydney Opera House
PROGRAM
Beethoven: Sonata in D minor, Op. 31. No. 2, Tempest
Beethoven: Sonata in C# minor, Op. 27, No. 2, Moonlight
Schumann: Fantasie in C major, Op. 17
A sold out concert is always something to cheer about and I am sure that Sarah Grunstein was delighted with the audience in the intimate Utzon Room at the Sydney Opera House. And they were delighted to greet her and to listen to her interpretations of monuments of the piano repertoire from the early 1800’s by Beethoven and Schumann in what was really an evening soiree.
Grunstein is well known to lovers of piano music in Sydney even though she only returns to her native city annually or bi-annually. She has a firm career in the USA as a soloist and as a teacher at some of the most prestigious musical institutions in the USA.
The performance of the Sonata Op. 31/2, Tempest, showed Grunstein to be a musician who searches for the colours inherent in Beethoven’s score. There was much attention to dynamic details and a sense of space, of a deep understanding of the architecture of the work.
To sit in the Utzon Room with its large windows looking out on to Sydney Harbour and to see lights from boats and ferries illuminate the waters whilst listening to the Moonlight Sonata must have charmed the audience. Grunstein is not a pianist who is note perfect and nor does she have a safe and sterile approach to the scores. Her deep understanding of the music takes the listener on a journey where she invents her own musical world. It is a personal view of the music. At the keyboard she sits near still and no histrionics ever mar the music. Grunstein gave short introductions to the start of each half of the concert and her comments before the Schumann Fantasie in C major was just right, placing the work in a timeline to Beethoven. Her playing of all three mvts showed her deep affection for work with lithe playing of the dramatic 1st movement, drawing out orchestral sonorities in the March and bringing a song-like approach to the intense and impassioned 3rd movement.
In the restricted confines of the Utzon Room with its ‘boomy’ acoustics it was nigh on impossible for Grunstein to attain a true pianissimo and that was a pity as she can clearly be seen as a pianist who revels in colour and expression.
