Images: ©️ Jeremy Denk / Nonesuch Records
You don’t meet this kind of album often. 700 years of music, played on a piano in (roughly) a chronological order, spanning over 2 CDs. And who better to comeuppance with this elaborate program than pianist Jeremy Denk, who’s creativeness and idiosyncratic approach to music-making is well known.
The first CD starts with few arrangements to early composers such as Marchaut, Binchois and Ockeghem. Practically all will not be familiar to piano enthusiasts. Here it works well, very much due to the effective piano arrangements, which don’t try to make the music more “pianistic”, keeping it satisfyingly minimal.
The journey through medieval, early baroque and polyphony (including more familiar names such as Byrd, Gesualdo, Monteverdi and Purcell), reaches a familiar ground with Scarlatti’s Sonata K.551 and Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, here given a truly great performance. Denk’s special way with Bach has already exemplified itself with his albums of few Bach Partitas and the Goldberg Variations, and here he is no less successful.
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With the second CD, we enter more familiar territory, and also a tougher competition. Denk’s performance of the slow movement of Mozart’s Sonata “For Beginner” K.545 is so lovely, with delicious ornamentations on the repeats and subtle, hushed touch, that one wishes Denk would include the entire sonata. The first movement of Beethoven’s last sonata (Op. 111) is taken from a previously released album of this piece with Ligeti’s 13 etudes. It’s so good I was tempted to go to this 2012 album and listen to the second variations movement (it’s one of the best digital versions in the catalog), but I continued on.
Not everything is roses with this CD though, with short pieces by Schumann and Chopin seem not to sit naturally with Denk. With Debussy – the first image, “Reflets dans l’eau” is included here – the performance is impressive by its sheer technical command and understanding of the musical tensions, but will not stand a comparison with recent performances by pianists such as Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Nelson Goerner, to name just two digital rivals.
It may be more obvious noting the connections in this diverse program, but more illusive pointing out the contrasts within the chronological order. Liszt’s arrangement of Wagner’s “Isoldens Liebestod”, which was also a highlight of Igor Levit’s impressive production “life”, is given a strong, coherent account here, projecting inner strength and agony rather than superficial pianistic brilliance. It then continues on to Brahms, with a lovely performance of the Intermezzo in B Minor (Op. 119), and then jumps to the “second Viennese school” with Schoenberg. Stravinsky’s “Piano Rag Music” is followed by Stockhausen’s Klavierstuck 1, perhaps pointing to the piano’s percussive possibilities. Glass’ Etude No. 2 is followed by a Ligeti Etude, highlighting the two compositions’ circular nature.
The album ends with Binchois, one of the early composers represented in the first CD, which brings us, like in the Goldberg Variations, back to where we started from. This is a fascinating album which, although historically programmed, never gives a feeling of didacticism. With some spectacularly played pieces of old and know, known and unknown composers, it should be listened to in one sitting. It’s worth your time and effort.
“c.1300 – c.2000”
Jeremy Denk – Piano
Nonesuch Records, CD 563316
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