Jeremy Denk Plays Ives

Here is Jeremy Denk performing "The Alcotts" from Charles Ives' Concord Sonata. This is the movement with the quotation from the Beethoven Fifth. It is amusing and clever but it also shows Ives' fertile and eclectic imagination at work.

American pianist Jeremy Denk has emerged recently as a fine soloist and chamber music player but he is also attracting a lot of attention for his writing. On the music side his latest recording is a collaboration with Joshua Bell called "French Impressions" (Sony). And coming soon is a Nonesuch CD devoted to music by Beethoven and Ligeti.

Denk writes a blog (www.jeremydenk.net) that is both extremely personal and amazingly analytical about himself, life and music. His latest blog entry (April 23) is typically unsettling. It is ostensibly about attending an all-Schubert recital by Mitsuko Uchida but that is only a prism for the day's events. And who can resist a blog that begins like this:

          After the day of manic joy and sunshine and desire, the last thing I wanted was to go into Carnegie Hall

          with all the Schubert and the syphilis and death.

Paul E. Robinson