Simone Dinnerstein - The Eye Is The First Circle

(Supertrain Records, 2024)

Simone Dinnerstein

Iconoclast is not too strong a word to describe Charles Ives or Simone Dinnerstein. Enigma is pretty close as well. Like poet and contemporary, Wallace Stevens, Ives studied at an Ivy League School (Harvard for Stevens and Yale for Ives). Both men had successful day jobs in insurance, while pursuing their equally successful avocations on the side. Ives’ music went unnoticed early in his career until fellow composers Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison publically recognised him. Ives would become considered an “American Original,” and the leading American composer of the 20th century.

Ives’ music was craggy and complicated, often incorporating hymn and traditional songs (e.g., Stephen Foster compositions) into his music. Multiple marching bands performing simultaneously in his hometown of Danbury entertained Ives, a pleasure that translated into his own music. One of Ives’ most enduring compositions was “Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60” (AKA the Concord Sonata). Composed between 1904 and 1920, when it was first published, Ives would tinker with his creation for the rest of his life.

Ives had ambitious thoughts when writing the sonata. The composition comprises four movements, each representing major figures associated with transcendentalism: I. "Emerson" (after Ralph Waldo Emerson), II. "Hawthorne" (after Nathaniel Hawthorne), III. "The Alcotts" (after Bronson Alcott and Louisa May Alcott), and IV. "Thoreau" (after Henry David Thoreau). The sonata reveals Ives' experimental approach. Without a formal staff, Ives composed a significant portion of the sonata. Ives employed advanced harmonies and cluster chords achieved by striking the keyboard with a 14+3⁄4-inch (37 cm) piece of wood.

The piece also reveals Ives' as a shameless name (or better, musical quotation) dropper. Ives quotes the opening bars of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in each movement, as well as the Hammerklavier. A smattering of Debussy and Wagner also reveals themselves. Progressive in style and forward-thinking, the Concord Sonata helped establish Ives as a leading American composer of the 20th century.

---

In 2007, pianist Simone Dinnerstein erupted, fully formed, with her self-financed debut recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations on the Telarc label. Well received at the time of its release, these Goldbergs revealed Dinnerstein’s keen and probing mind, seeking some unheard recesses of Bach’s masterpiece. Since that time, Dinnerstein has curated an eclectic collection of 14 releases that nominally orbit Bach while venturing out as far as Philip Lasser, Philip Glass, and Richard Danielpour. Dinnerstein also thinks bigger than mere piano performance, extending her reach into production and programming that transcends what has become ordinary.

Dinnerstein’s collaboration with singer/songwriter Tift Merritt resulted in 2013’s Night (Sony Classical), a project mashing together the classical, folk, and rock worlds, looking for commonalities while illuminating unseen and unheard associations. 2015’s Broadway-Lafayette (Sony Classical) crosses Maurice Ravel (Piano Concerto in G Major, M. 83) with Philip Lasser (Piano Concerto "The Circle and the Child") and George Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue), all with the support of the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Kristjan Järvi. The pianist put a Caribbean spin on the Classical with Mozart In Havana (Sony Classical, 2017), recorded in Havana with The Havana Lyceum Orchestra in an effort of cultural cross pollenation.

After a successful coupling of Bach and Glass concertos on Circles: Piano Concertos by Bach + Glass (Orange Mountain Music, 2018) made with the string orchestra, Far Cry, Dinnerstein dealt with the COVID pandemic juxtaposing Schubert and Glass on A Character of Quiet (Orange Mountain Music, 2020), recorded in her home with longtime producer Adam Abeshouse. On The Eye Is The First Circle, Dinnerstein takes a significant step in expanding her multimedia presence by incorporating Charles Ives’ “Piano Sonata No. 2, Concord, Mass., 1840–60.”

The recording of the sonata derives from a live performance of a larger audio-visual work providing the title of the album, where the pianist performed the sonata against the backdrop of manipulated images from The Fulbright Triptych, a painting the pianist’s father, Simon Dinnerstein. Dinnerstein explains that this project was a way to consider personal evolution - the accumulation of experience and influence and what that destination looks like.

Dinnerstein’s performance is commanding. It has to be. Ives was a crafty composer who left a lot up to the performer. Dinnerstein approaches the Concord Sonata with an intensity and gravity, completely lacking Ives’ hidden sense of humor. This is no real criticism; Ives is always a hard nut to crack. Dinnerstein seeks the fissures in Ives’ music, where she can stick her fingers in and prise it open, revealing its hidden memory. The pianist fills the “Emerson” (first movement) section with rhetorical questions having no answers, creating a taut drama filled with unrequited expectation, not unlike much of Emerson’s writing. This is the lengthiest movement of the sonata.

The second movement, “Hawthorne,” contains some ambient evening sounds of crickets and dogs barking in the distance. Dinnerstein enters with a shimmering passage, light becoming progressively denser. Ruminative in the beginning, the movement becomes busier, with layers upon layers of sound splashing passages crashing into one another, dissolving into the sounds of children playing. The “Alcotts” movement is the shortest and most lyrical while still keeping an amount of anxiety floating in the music. The last movement, “Thoreau,” begins with bird sounds and interpolates the echo of a harmonium, giving the piece an ethereal ending. This may not be groundbreaking for everyone, but we should praise Dinnerstein for her innovative thinking.