Pianist Simone Dinnerstein has been playing, recording and living with J.S. Bach's music for years.

Her debut album was of Bach's Goldberg Variations, and it made her a national celebrity in the classical music world nearly overnight. She's been written about recently in the New York Times, profiled on National Public Radio and tours almost every month of the year.

A few weeks ago, she was signed by Sony, which will produce her third album (again, of works of Bach).

When Dinnerstein comes to the Wisconsin Union Theater on Friday, Dec. 4, she'll play a program including Aaron Copland's Piano Variations, four impromptus by Franz Schubert, Phillip Lasser's Twelve Variations on a Chorale by J.S. Bach and Bach's own French Suite.

77 Square talked with Dinnerstein about her love of Bach, her influences (including teacher Peter Serkin) and her future plans.

Much has been made of your affinity for Bach. Can you talk about why you keep coming back to this composer?

Bach is my favorite composer, both to listen to and to play. I find his music to be the perfect balance between immense craft and architecture and compositional form. ... It's very personal and human, expressive.

I've never been a singer ... (but) I do think that his cantatas and the passions and the mass are among his best work. The core of his musicianship was expressed in his vocal writing, mainly because of the fact that it had text that he was very much relating to. It's very spiritual music. I think as an instrumentalist I have a lot to learn by listening to what he wrote for the voice.

It looks like you've been performing most of your Madison program -- the Webern, Lasser and Bach's French suite -- since at least February. These pieces seem to have a longevity for you.

I like to live with a program for a long time and hear how the music develops and changes, and that happens through the experience of performing. Every time I perform it it seems to evolve a little bit more. It reflects the fact that the music is so well-written. It has so many layers of depth to it.

You studied at the Juilliard School with Peter Serkin, who performed in Madison (the Brahms first piano concerto with the Madison Symphony) in September. Did studying with him influence your style?

He was a big influence on me, though we are very different types of pianists and maybe even different types of musicians. He was an extremely thoughtful teacher.

In what way are you different musicians? Is that in terms of process or performance, or both?

What the composer intended is something that is at the forefront of his mind. (Serkin) looks at every possible score he can get, every possible edition.

Though I certainly want to try to understand as much as possible what the composer wrote and why he wrote it, ultimately I feel that the music is coming to life through my own performance of it and interpretation of it. ... The music is dead without the performer bringing their own imagination to it. Sometimes I don't agree with things in the text. If it doesn't feel right, I don't play it that way.

I don't really care what the composer intended. I'm interested in it and of course I respect it, but if Bach was going to come to life and tell me he didn't intend the Goldberg Variations to be played the way I played it, I wouldn't change what I was doing.

I don't see the point of trying to find out how Bach might have done it or Beethoven might have done it. I want to do what feels right to me.

IF YOU GO

What: Simone Dinnerstein

Where: Wisconsin Union Theater, 800 Langdon St.

When: Friday, Dec. 4 at 8 p.m.

Tickets: $18, 25 and $30, discounts for youth and UW-Madison students

Info: uniontheater.wisc.edu

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