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.
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. The New York Times has praised her “penetrating musical intelligence” and her interpretation of the Goldberg Variations has seen her hailed as the “shining light” among Bach pianists of this generation. Her decision to perform the Goldbergs this year is deeply personal. The Bondi attack on December 14 hit her hard, even from New York.
“The Bondi massacre was like September 11 for me. And for many,” she explained. “After September 11 the only thing that made sense to me in the entire world was the Goldberg Variations. In fact, that is when I learned them. It’s the only music, the only thing in the world that makes sense to me at this time.”
Of Bach’s genius, she said the work transforms its opening aria into a vast range of dance and keyboard genres, encompassing “emotion, caprice, virtuosity, lightness, darkness and even humour” and she very much looks forward to bringing that to Australian audiences.
“I love Australia, I love my Australian audiences, and I can’t wait to return.”
Sarah Grunstein performs at the Melbourne Recital Centre’s Primrose Potter Salon on October 21 – melbournerecital.com.au/whats-on/current-productions/sarah-grunstein and at the Sydney Opera House’s Utzon Room on October 28 – sydneyoperahouse.com/classical-music/sarah-grunstein-bach-goldberg-variations