ClevelandClassical.com Header
Ad
Ad

Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Dynamic Buffet from Pianist Jeremy Denk (Nov. 30)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Oberlin alumnus Jeremy Denk returned to Finney Chapel on Thursday, November 30 to play an intriguing program on the Artist Recital Series. Inspired in part by Judy Chicago’s 1979 permanent installation at the Brooklyn Museum that sets 39 personalized place settings for famous women at an enormous table, for the first half of his program, the pianist chose pieces by nine women to create a dynamic musical menu.

The second half featured a pair of 19th-century works by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, composers with close personal connections to Clara Schumann, whose Romanze, Op. 21, No. 1 launched the whole evening. [Read more…]

Jeremy Denk brings a celebration of women composers to Oberlin Artist Recital Series

by

by Mike Telin

Like many, Jeremy Denk’s time as an undergraduate at Oberlin was filled with emotion. “When I arrived I had so much growing up to do,” the celebrated pianist recalled. “So every place in Oberlin is kind of covered with those memories — emotional memories, discoveries, and stress, of course. I was trying to do a double degree — trying to be a pianist and a chemist, and in some ways I really wanted to be an English major. I wanted to be a lot of different things.”

As part of the Oberlin Artist Recital Series, Jeremy Denk will perform a program that celebrates women composers from the 19th to 21st centuries along with works by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms on Thursday, November 30 at 7:30 pm in Finney Chapel. Tickets are available online.

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with John Adams and Jeremy Denk (Feb. 4)

by

by Peter Feher

The Cleveland Orchestra transformed into the Los Angeles Philharmonic over the weekend. Even if a snowstorm outside suggested otherwise, the program on February 4 at Severance Music Center had the California spirit of experimentation at all costs. The Orchestra had postponed the performance by a day, and lingering bad weather plus the new date meant Friday’s sparse crowd was the committed, brave-it-out type.

The concert embraced more than just a general innovative attitude, though. Composer John Adams led the Cleveland musicians in a distinctive all-contemporary bill, in the model of the “Green Umbrella” series he chairs for the LA Phil.

[Read more…]

The Cleveland Orchestra:
Denk on Adams & writing

by

by Jarrett Hoffman

Almost two years passed, with Jeremy Denk limited to thinking about the piece, playing around with the fingerings, and maybe emailing the composer a question or two. All while he had it solidly learned.

“That was horrible not to be able to play this piece,” the pianist said during a recent telephone interview. “But.” He paused. “Good things come to those who wait, I suppose.”

Only recently did the opportunity arrive to perform John Adams’ third piano concerto, Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? — written in 2018, and played by only a couple of other keyboardists before Denk was to take it on with the composer on the podium in late March of 2020.

Finally, his first go at it came in Seattle in the early days of 2022. St. Louis is next, in late January. And Cleveland will follow when Denk and Adams share the Severance stage with The Cleveland Orchestra on February 3 (at 7:30 pm), February 5 (at 8:00 pm), and February 6 (at 3:00 pm).

“Now we’re really in the thick of trying to define this piece and make sense of it,” Denk said, “which is so much fun.”

[Read more…]

Cleveland International Piano Competition kicks off 2019 Concert Series with Jeremy Denk

by

by Mike Telin

If you’ve ever wondered what the Cleveland International Piano Competition does during the gap years between its signature event, the answer is a lot. Last spring CIPC hosted its Young Artist Competition, and from January through May will present five free concerts at the Beachwood Community Center. And on Saturday, January 19 the Competition will kick off the 2019 Concert Series with an 8:00 pm recital by Jeremy Denk at the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Mixon Hall.

Denk, an Oberlin alum and winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, will perform Beethoven’s Five Variations on “Rule Britannia” in D and An die ferne Geliebte, Op. 98/S. 469 (transc. Liszt), Adams’ I Still Play, Bizet’s Variations chromatiques, Mendelssohn’s Variations sérieuses in d, Op. 54, and Schumann’s Fantasy in C, Op. 1. Tickets are available online.

“We’re very happy Jeremy is coming,” CIPC President & CEO Yaron Kohlberg said during a telephone conversation. “He’s one of the major pianists in the United States right now. He’ll be presenting a wonderful program and I look forward to a beautiful concert.”

This Saturday’s concert also marks one of Kohlberg’s first public events since he began his tenure with the Competition this past fall. Kohlberg, the second prize winner at the 2007 CIPC, is uniquely qualified for the job. [Read more…]

Piano Competition Festival to feature Zsolt Bognár’s “Classical Life” interviews

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Bognar-Kaupo KikkasClevelanders and classical music fans near and far already know Zsolt Bognár as a talented concert pianist who specializes in Germanic, Russian, and Romantic repertoire. But there’s more. He’s a writer, a speaker, and a skilled interviewer. His speaking engagements have included two TEDMED talks and guest appearances on National Public Radio programs dealing with a variety of subjects. And he’s recently become the Charlie Rose of the classical music world as host of the Elyria Pictures film series “Living the Classical Life.”

As part of the Cleveland International Piano Competition’s 2016 Festival, Bognár will emcee three morning sessions this week in the Lecture Hall at the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Susanna Mälkki & Jeremy Denk at Severance Hall (April 23)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

Susanna_Malkki_Simon–Fowler_Photo1Finnish guest conductor Susanna Mälkki and American pianist Jeremy Denk both made their Cleveland Orchestra debuts on Thursday evening, April 23 at Severance Hall in an impressive program of works by Jean Sibelius, Béla Bartók and Igor Stravinsky. The chemistry between the two and the Orchestra produced a precise but risky journey through Bartók’s third piano concerto that was edge-of-your-seats thrilling. [Read more…]

Preview: Tuesday Musical — a conversation with pianist Jeremy Denk

by

by Daniel Hautzinger

DENK-JeremyJeremy Denk disproves the theory that all men are created equal. He is a classical pianist who was named Musical America’s 2014 Instrumentalist of the Year, received a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2013, writes an engaging blog as well as having been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times Review of Books, wrote a libretto for a new opera, has a contract to pen a memoir for Random House, and received two degrees upon graduating from Oberlin (young, no less), in chemistry and music. Is there anything he can’t do? “I’m not good at washing the dishes,” he said in a phone conversation. “Or many other real life things.”

That self-deprecating humor underlies much of his work, and how he thinks about music. “It really is an important part of my worldview,” he said. Take for example the program he will perform on Feb. 4 at EJ Thomas Hall in Akron, as part of the Tuesday Musical Concert Series. “In this program there is a strong obsession with humor.” It features Mozart’s Piano Sonata K. 533/494, three Ligeti etudes, and Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze and Carnaval. “These are dances but also satires of dances, with an incredible sense of wit and mockery of the Philistines,” he said of Carnaval. [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Artist Recital Series: Steven Isslerlis & Jeremy Denk at Finney Chapel (February 5)

by

by Daniel Hathaway

The Isserlis-Denkglobetrotting British cellist Steven Isserlis recently passed through Northeast Ohio twice in eight days, performing with Kyrill Gerstein on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society Series on January 29 (our review appears here) and joining his fellow Oberlin alumnus Jeremy Denk on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series in Finney Chapel on February 5 (popping off to Chicago and New York for concerts and masterclasses in between). What’s even better than hearing Isserlis perform twice on successive Tuesdays is hearing him play two very different, superbly constructed programs with two equally fine partners.

In Cleveland, Isserlis built his program around both of Brahms’s sonatas, separated by Liszt’s own arrangements of early songs and prefaced by Bartók’s First Rhapsody and Busoni’s Finnish folk song variations. In Oberlin, he drew back the curtains on what could have been a typical chamber music concert in Paris during the Belle époque — that brief cultural golden age between the 1870s and the first World War — including two out-of-period works that fit right into the spirit of the occasion.  [Read more…]

Review: Oberlin Orchestra at Carnegie Hall (January 19)

by

by Michael Cirigliano II

Special to ClevelandClassical.com

CappingOberlinOrchestraCarnegieHall off a week of performances that brought their jazz, new music, and Baroque ensembles to four of New York City’s prized venues, the Oberlin Conservatory of Music imported its prestigious orchestra to Carnegie Hall for a varied program that included contributions from two of the school’s most famous alumni, pianist Jeremy Denk and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Christopher Rouse.

Conductor Raphael Jiménez was wise to showcase the divergent talents of his ensemble on the program’s first half, programming both the high camp of Ravel’s La Valse and the Viennese delicacy of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21. After a tentative and shadowy opening in the Ravel, the orchestra’s rich colors slowly began to emerge, led by a glossy violin section that displayed impeccable intonation that endured even as the composer continued to process his stately waltz through the fractured machine of a postwar Cubist landscape.  [Read more…]

Follow ClevelandClassical.com

Contact us