When Simone Dinnerstein's career launched unexpectedly into the stratosphere two years ago, it's safe to say that no one was more taken aback than Dinnerstein herself. She was, after all, a 35-year-old piano teacher and mother living in Park Slope, Brooklyn at the time her self-financed debut CD came out, a take on Bach's Goldberg Variations so deeply personal that listening to it sometimes felt like eavesdropping. And while 35 is still young by "Park Slope mom" standards, by the skewed metric of solo piano careers, it puts you roughly in league with Methuselah.

Nonetheless, Dinnerstein's Variations hit some mysterious nerve cluster, gathering momentum with a force that would confound Malcolm Gladwell. After being picked up by the Telarc label, the album went on to outsell The White Stripes on Amazon.com, garnering Dinnerstein a hailstorm of solo recital dates and orchestra bookings, a segment on NPR's "Morning Edition," and a big feature in The New York Times.

For a minute, in fact, it seemed like the runaway train of Dinnerstein's Goldberg Variations was threatening to derail her preternatural composure. Happily, with her follow-up disc, it seems as though Dinnerstein has ultimately refused to allow her sudden ascent to disturb the… read more »