What's On

Internationally acclaimed Australian pianist, Sarah Grunstein, returns to the Sydney Opera House by popular demand, to perform J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations on Monday 24 October at 7.3opm in the Sydney Opera House Utzon Room. 

Bach’s Goldberg Variations is perhaps one of the most challenging works in the keyboard literature.  Sarah’s recent performance of the Goldberg Variations has led to her being acclaimed as the "shining light" among the Bach pianists of this generation.

Sarah Grunstein has achieved renown as an impassioned performer of Bach.  From her early studies with Australian pedagogue Nancy Salas, she learned about 18^th-century styles, character, dance, emotion, and improvisatory performance.  This was at a time when most people were still performing Bach in a very “rigid” way.  She remarks, “People ask me how I do what I do.  I’ve studied and played a lot of Bach, and have read much about 18^th and 19^th century style – not just musical style, but compositional style, improvisation, improvisatory performance (slightly different from improvisation), and the language of various arts genres including dance, visual arts, and literature.  Even though I am playing music that was composed for the harpsichord, I treat the piano as a piano and let my ‘pianist-voice’ speak.  And keeping in my mind and heart Bach’s compositional language and what I believe his creative intent was, I go to town with it.”

“Introspective and poetic, Sarah Grunstein's performance was profoundly sensitive . . . 

for just a few hours, she mesmerised us" - Shamista de Soysa, SoundsLikeSydney

Many will remember Sarah Grunstein as the pianist who, as a young teenager, performed the soundtrack for Bruce Beresford’s early Australian film, “The Getting of Wisdom.”  Sarah Grunstein soon after moved to New York, graduating from The Juilliard School (where she was later appointed as a Teaching Fellow), and earned her doctorate at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.  Her career has included concerts at London’s Southbank Centre, New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Italy, Austria, Hungary, the U.K., New Zealand, and her homeland.  

"In a city rich in pianists par excellence, Sarah Grunstein is la crème de la crème.

Grunstein's masterful rendition of the Goldberg Variations held her audience in a sparkling web of enchantment” - Eve Rifkah, The Classical Voice of New England.

"At Sarah Grunstein's Bach concerts at Carnegie Hall (Weill Recital Hall) in February, the opening notes of the Prelude from the Partita in B-flat evoked memories of Dame Myra Hess and Englishman Harold Samuel, i.e., she cared deeply about the music, knew stylistically what to do with it, and (best of all) produced a demure, pearly, singing tone … This Australian native … is an artist worth hearing." – Harris Goldsmith, American Record Guide

Described by The New York Times for her “penetrating musical intelligence” these two concerts will be a rare chance to hear one of Australia’s finest international pianists.