Sara Daneshpour at NMWA

Read my review published today on the Washington Post Web site:

Charles T. Downey, Daneshpour offers wide range, contrasts in piano recital
Washington Post, April 8, 2010

Sara Daneshpour came to the National Museum of Women in the Arts on Tuesday night, to give a recital postponed because of snow back in February. The Washington-born pianist, who took second prize at the 2007 William Kapell Competition when she was just 20 years old, played with a combination of technical abandon, which was almost faultless, and elegant restraint of tone and volume.

Daneshpour's strength in seeking out unexpected combinations of color was served best by two sets of variations, a form where the style and texture change regularly, as in Rachmaninoff's (endlessly) extended Variations on a Theme of Corelli. A nod to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Robert Schumann, later this year, came in the form of his Variations on the Name "Abegg." Exuberant, even inebriated outbursts followed Daneshpour's evanescent treatment of the theme, with the softer variations featuring skillful hand crossings and iridescent trills. Debussy's "Estampes" had a multi-layered sound, its three movements like misty vistas composed of washes of watercolor-like transparency more than individual brushstrokes. [Continue reading]

Sara Daneshpour, piano
Shenson Chamber Music Series
National Museum of Women in the Arts

Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 7 (op. 10, no. 3)
Schumann, Variations on the Name of "Abegg" (op. 1)
Liszt, Concert Paraphrase of Verdi, Rigoletto (S. 434)
Debussy, Estampes
Prokofiev, Toccata (op. 11)