Simone Dinnerstein: NPR Tiny Desk Concert

Almost any pianist, from a budding beginner to a pro like Simone Dinnerstein, will tell you that one of the basic techniques of keyboard playing is also the toughest to master: making your hands to do separate things simultaneously. The great Johann Sebastian Bach knew this to be true. That’s the primary reason he composed his Two-Part Inventions. On one hand (pardon the metaphor) they are rigorous exercises he wrote in the 1720s for the musical education of his children and students. On the other hand, as Dinnerstein told the audience at this Tiny Desk Concert, they are “an endless well of musical knowledge and imagination.“ Some of the Inventions zing with the speed of a sewing machine. Others dance and some unfold like a gentle aria. Dinnerstein learned a number of Bach’s Two-Part Inventions as a youngster. Later she used them to teach her own students how to divide their brains. And now, as an adult musician with a major career, she has returned to these deceptively simple pieces, finding their complexi