jeremydenk
@jeremydenk
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What an amazing morning practicing Beethoven 110 on this baby from the 1870s … life would be so much more fun and musical if pianos had lighter actions
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Nellie came around the corner of the piano to express some concern about Ives
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i’ll just say there are people out there who are made very passionate and excited about whether trills start on the main note or the note above.
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I just played the bach b minor fugue for Linda Ronstadt which I hadn’t expected on my life bingo card but it was a good feeling.
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My review word for word from backstage guy halfway through the wtc book one: “your playing is . (pause for bite of donut) I mean it’s moving bro, (second bite) that’s frickin legit dude.”.
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at last, tchaikovsky’s lifelong obsession with the female orgasm comes to fruition.
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I had some existential despair this morning at the prospect of refilling the brita filter and my partner asked if I was because I was still upset about lang lang’s cover of jingle bells and the answer was sadly yes.
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there’s a lot of reverent writing on Beethoven 9 now and so here’s my take. 1st mvmt: slightly too austere.2nd: amazing 120-proof old style ludwig .3rd: 20 minutes???.4th: an absolute hot mess but beyond delightful, perhaps the first canonic example of jumping the shark.
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OMG this is amazing and wonderful.
I'm doing some research today for my #picturebook #biography of Clara Schumann and came across this surprise:. One of Clara's students was Carl Friedberg, and one of Carl's students was Nina Simone. #pianists #piano #MusicHistory #WomeninMusic
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My parents and friends eventually gave up asking about my book, but here it is at last. I am excited and happy, but it’s hard for me to describe. A neurotic memoir, covering from my first official piano lesson (age 5) to my last (26), with plenty of stops along the way 2/22/2022
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when i was eleven i thought dvorak’s 8th symphony was one of the most wonderful pieces ever—one of the few things my eleven year old self was absolutely right about.
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i was trying to sweep the apartment but this beethoven op. 111 boogie-woogie thing kept bugging me so here comes my first EVER thread.
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I am smiling an Ivesian smile behind that mask after a formidable, profoundly colored, meticulously voiced performance of the concord sonata last night by the great @MarcAndreHam
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Just faced down the fear and played through the magnificent John Adams piano concerto from memory for the first time, and it was (knock on wood) kind of fun and insane.
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I woke up this morning with a desperate desire to play the piano which I guess is a good thing.
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i talked schubert with a gifted young pianist then circled the park on a bike, then listened to schwanengesang with brendel and after 5 min of major and minor i was 19 again, in love (with who? didn’t matter) feeling sad and overwhelmed and springy and alive and aware of death.
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definition of hardcore: at the age of 10 (or 11, or 12? no matter) nina simone gave her debut recital in tryon town hall for the mayor and various tryon dignitaries and the program was some bach toccatas and the art of the fugue.
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A master has left us! Remember vividly adjudicating doctoral oral exams in IU, and Pressler asked the poor guy, “What makes Schumann Schumann?” and student was confused and scared and Pressler said “love” which I suppose was true but not exactly doctoral oral exam material.
Legendary pianist Menahem Pressler, 99, has sadly passed away. Pressler died peacefully at his home in London yesterday, 6 May. ♥️
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Sitting on lawn listening to moving slow movement of Stravinsky violin concerto thinking of that beautiful Kundera observation that Stravinsky lost his home and he started to wander through the rooms of music history which he felt was his true home.
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Cultural nostalgia — I guess I’m sad that the hall where I played the concord sonata and heard Ida Haendel come in three bars early in the Franck Sonata is now an H&M
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four hours on gaspard de la nuit, three on brahms b-flat concerto, and i’ve earned a beer perhaps.
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my editor informed me that EGBDF is on the @nytimes bestseller list which … wtf! so overwhelmed and grateful to all the readers and booksellers and others who have helped make this crazy book a success.
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I asked chat gpt to write a program note for op. 110 Beethoven and it got the wrong piece and mislabeled the movements even of the wrong piece so I think the lucrative program note industry can breathe a sigh of relief.
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In my dreams I would play the Bach g major partita with the freshness and spiraling joy of this roadside succulent
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Today if you must know I recorded Bach and Ives for four hours and then ate smoked kippers on my sofa while binge watching dynasty reboot.
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the world may be falling apart but i did correct a wrong note by steven isserlis today in the faure quintet so that was a triumph.
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I just realized I had a piece of kimchi on my face for an entire performance of Bartok third concerto.
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it’s fine not to enjoy the riches of bartok’s music (many don’t), but “insurance company” feels mean-spirited, less a critique than a sneer (and twitter has enough of those).
I am ready to admit that I do not enjoy Bartok’s music at all. It’s like if you turned a call with your insurance company into music. I’m very sorry.
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yesterday on my way home from chelsea i saw through a window the most beautiful banana cream pie i’ve ever seen, cut in scrumptious cross-section, and i deeply regretted not buying it, so now i’m practicing brahms 2nd concerto to capture both that beauty and my scrumptious regret.
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I once played the pdq Bach sonata for viola four hands when I was thirteen and it was the second most fun thing I learned to do that year.
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charles rosen: . In all of Mozart’s supreme expressions of suffering and terror there is something shockingly voluptuous. Nor does this detract from its power or effectiveness: the grief and the sensuality strengthen each other, and end by becoming indivisible, indistinguishable.
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With Brahms you often feel you’re in front of a gorgeous painting at a museum, admiring, taking in; (robert) Schumann is like a person in front of a painting who desperately wants to run into the painting and it is irrelevant to him that that is impossible.
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i promise not to let my twitter feed devolve entirely into pet peeves about markings that pianists ignore, but here’s some more
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I realize there are far more important issues in the world, and dangers to democracy from without and within, but I’m still extremely excited to be speaking to Terry Gross today about the joys and sorrows of music lessons, and the debts we all owe to teachers.
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I’m sitting next to a priest on the plane on Christmas morning at 936 am who just ordered a Bloody Mary.
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if you didn’t think i could write 2000 words on the first six measures of the Bach f# minor fugue (BWV 859) you were so so so so wrong oh god someone stop me.
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another flattering cameo for classical music in popular culture
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I googled and googled but I think it’s my scoop to inform you that John Williams shamelessly stole the Star Wars theme from Brahms op 83 first movement and I’d like to be paid for this observation.
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Anybody have any good listening recommendations for the end of democracy.
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Just out on a walk thinking about counterpoint and what a miracle it is and how the hell can you talk about it with non musicians and I came across a bear in the middle of the road who looked at me sooo bored and I backed off slowly humming William Byrd.
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trying to write a little note about this famous and bizarre haydn passage, what it does, how it speaks in the modern moment, and if anyone has any metaphors they care to share hit me up
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I mean I’ve done some nerdy tweets but I could never touch this.
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I came home to the one sole light on at the piano waiting for my attention. study, care, diligence, patience .
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walking tipsily back through notting hill on my way back from my first full “gaspard de la nuit” i was overcome by a thunderstorm, and properly soaked, and i thought oh ondine.
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“Sempre pp” in Beethoven does not mean “always pianissimo” but is a kind of meta marking … not just very quiet but a hush upon a hush … a sound that is about the act of approaching the inaudible (an act that Beethoven knew better than most).
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Today I watched a half hour of a rather well known pianist and thinker doing a lecture and i really really really wanted to do a reaction video rant but I was a good boy and did not.
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every time i play bach 1053 i think “goddamnit THIS time i’m going to analyze the second movement once and for all” to be a proper prepared musician and then i start up and find chords there that don’t want to be analyzed, hovering, functioning but not functioning, so incredible.
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dear followers it is possible i am on some other platforms, especially ones with four letters, and i hope to post there some nice thoughts about bach soon and other things.
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one of my main complaints when i hear pianists play haydn or mozart is that i hear too much city and not enough country … not enough of the genuinely rustic which weaves in and out of the courtly as in real life back then.
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How did I get through all my absurdly extensive education without learning that the sarabande originated in Latin America ?.
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Am very excited tonight to play the glorious hallelujah junction with @conorhanick in memory of the great Jorja Fleezanis
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I mean I think we made some music in there.
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I thought I played with such sensitive phrasing that the earth moved, but I guess it was a wider phenomenon.
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Here at a pub outside the barbican and young guildhall students are telling me their existential dread about the future of classical music.
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Every day that i encourage young musicians to play Haydn a little naughtier I consider a day spent for good.
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when you wake to find an empty pint of ben and jerry’s next to the piano
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Student just came in with Mendelssohn e minor prelude and fugue and I kept hearing Charles Rosen calling it “kitsch” but god I love that kitsch so much it breaks my heart.
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arpeggios and scales are the car chases of classical concertos.
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admittedly, ligeti telling you to play with sparing pedal and still do two simultaneous melodies in octaves legato is kind of (in musicological parlance) a dick move.
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Listening to this guy (the politest term i could muster) is a good music lesson: if you accent everything, nothing is accented. Both in speechifying and musical performance, it tends to reveal what it attempts to conceal— a lack of substance
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This round deep black rock made me think of the black pearl from the goldberg variations and all its unfathomable dissonances (yes I am that much of a nerd still)
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I started idly practicing the wtc book two and you know it ain’t half bad.
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yesterday: ravel or debussy? today i offer you an even more haunting classical music dilemma
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There’s a wardrobe in the Wigmore’s Gerald Moore room and I’m sure if you walk in you end up not in narnia but in some amazing cocktail lounge where Cortot and Nellie Melba and Casals and many other legends are all hanging out bemoaning modern musicianship
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After a long day of practicing Bach is there anything better than a cute bartender and a crispy chicken sandwich.
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No one really thinks that.
It’s so interesting that people think that liking Mozart puts you on another plane of intelligence. It exists in music academia and in professional classical music circles, too, which is SO weird to me?.
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yes, yes, celebrate beethoven’s birthday, but remember there’s only eight shopping days left until the charles ives 150th birthday year.
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listening to various legendary pianists panic in this place is at least some comfort
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because of an ongoing writing project, i am taking piano lessons (somewhat remotely) with Helène de Montgeroult (1764-1836) whose études are preceded by the most wonderful piano-playing advice and fascinating insight into the early days of modern piano virtuosity.
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has any musicologist written a paper on the late Romantic fetish for draping everything in as many arpeggios as possible, like an overly zealous interior decorator?
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I put on Gilels doing Haydn c minor and braced myself for some old school Russian nonsense but you know what that dude could really play the piano.
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Last night I had drinks with members of a self decribed indie pop band and based on this data hanging out with pop musicians is infinitely more fun than hanging out with classical musicians.
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if you're looking for a justification for art, look at what all that painting did to George W Bush.
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I was very honored they held a city wide parade to celebrate my performance of Bach partitas last night in Kansas City.
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One of the curses of writing about classical music is that sometimes you have to refer to “the work”.
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An odiferous Jeremy Denk at music camp summer 1983 in the act of deciding that Brahms second was the only really important piano concerto
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best part of day: an hour meditating on faure d minor quintet, which has some of the most ravishing progressions of all time, and other baffling passages like musical LSD trips—the hallucinatory is what you want, wonder, bent and curved rules of harmony, a suspension of causality.
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One of the unexpected challenges of resurrecting a piece I haven’t played since I was 19 is that I find my arms colliding with my stomach a lot more now.
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Finally out in the mountains after many musical hardworking days at beautiful @brevardmusic
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what a joy to be practicing my bach partitas on a tuned piano and to be thinking about the aliveness of rhythm.
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“Who knew”? Anyone who has rehearsed Mendelssohn with Steven Isserlis will have heard this at least a hundred times
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