Bringing Bach back home
Now a Steinway Artist based in New York, where she has lived since studying at The Juilliard School, Grunstein has performed across the United States, Europe and Australia.
Internationally acclaimed pianist Sarah Grunstein is returning to Australia this October to perform Bach’s Goldberg Variations at two of the country’s finest concert venues.
Born and raised in Sydney, Grunstein grew up in a home shaped by survival, art and music. Her parents, Hania and Bolek, were both Holocaust survivors from Poland. Her mother survived polio as a child and later Auschwitz. Her father survived 14 concentration camps, including Dachau, kept alive in part by his talent for painting portraits of Nazi officers.
“I asked him as a child how he survived,” Grunstein told The AJN. “He said, ‘Miracle after miracle after miracle. And I could do anything with my hands.'”
Her mother always said that art and music make the world a more beautiful place, and the family home was filled with both. Grunstein remembers dancing around the living room at age three to her parents’ records, listening to classical music, cabaret, Broadway songs and Jewish music. She watched her older brother Harry’s piano lessons before asking for her own.
“When I perform, it is as if the work I’m performing is my closest friend, and I am bringing that friend to my audience so they can understand my friend as I do,” she said.
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