Flight of the Concord, in this week’s New Yorker.
Now, if you think I’m the sort of person who would run down first thing in the morning and buy nine hundred copies of the New Yorker (and some potato chips) from my local newsstand, you are absolutely correct.
Since the piece is an obsessive and neurotic account of making a recording, it’s interesting to note that I spent some part of Christmas obsessively and neurotically archiving old recordings of myself. I unearthed some provocative memories, ghosts of Denks past. I have updated the “listen” section of my website with a few of these live performances, with plenty of embarrassing warts. For instance, Prokofiev’s Visions Fugitives was a very new piece for me when I played it in 2009 …
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
And I was interested to hear an uneven performance of Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze from 2010,
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I will avoid saying what parts I like and hate.
Musicians are torn between the dream of the definitive recording and the dream of the affecting performance, between the paradigms of two different media; I indulge another dream, that I can head off into a space where I’m “just” making music, in context-less paradise. A vacation from occasion and circumstance: not too likely…
25 Comments
Nice to have a new entry (and a New Yorker article to look forward to tonight). But what happened to the wild record-release party dream that was the previous entry? I liked that one.
It’s unknown what happened to the last post; some web design stuff has been going on behind the scenes and hopefully we will be able to locate the rabbit hole the dream went down. In a way, appropriate that a dream would vanish like a dream?
Bravo Jeremy! I just read your New Yorker piece, and it’s brilliant and moving and a little heart-breaking, and in its own way as fine a companion to your recording as the essay is to the sonata. And I can’t wait for your next performance of it, done completely differently.
Thanks for bringing such fire to music and life.
All the best,
Conrad
Yes, Bravo!
And thank you to allow us listening some of your performance, in two different repertoires.
i enjoy particularly Prokofiev.
And your sentence “I indulge another dream, that I can head off into a space where I’m “just” making music, in context-less paradise” is really a dream of a true musician.
Marc.
Jeremy:
What an absolutely fascinating article – I love your sense of humor (I miss the schmear)! What a journey and thank you for taking all of us along for the ride. Was crafting and publishing an essay in the New Yorker similar in ways?
What Conrad said. Seeing your article in the New Yorker yesterday made me feel like a proud aunt whose favorite nephew has made good. (“If it isn’t young Jeffrey — why, I’ve been reading his blog for YEARS!”) And if you ever make it to Bonn (Beethovenhaus — excellent Steinway, or so they tell me), I’ll be there, brandishing my tattered copy, lips tightly clenched so that none of the Seven Unforgivable Post-Concert Remarks have a chance to escape.
P.S. Headline in today’s FAZ: “Denksport macht neugierig auf mehr”. Absolutely!
Modern recording seems to be a little like that proverbial ax that is still my great-grandfather’s ax, even though every part of it has been replaced. At what point is a recording so altered that it’s no longer the artist’s performance?
The New Yorker piece was as much fun as watching you play; if I hadn’t seen you play the Concord (at Zankel Hall) would I have enjoyed reading it so much? Well, very nearly, I’m sure. Nonetheless: a total media experience!
Congrats Jeremy! Great piece. And Denkophiles: My brand new book on Beethoven Now includes an entire chapter on Jeremy, based on a lengthy interview, along with excerpts from this blog! Trill, baby, trill. http://bit.ly/yDka4
Dear Mr. Denk,
Thanks for the edifying article about your work on the Ives Concord.
I have never liked the music of Charles Ives and dismissed him as a crank, a misfit, a curmudgeon, when I was a teenager. Since then, I have turned off whatever radio station I was listening to when I heard Ives’ work performed.
However, after reading your essay and listening online to your interview, I realize I was wrong. I’ve been wrong and will continue to be wrong about a lot of things, but this morning was a pleasant revelation. I think I’m beginning to get it–I mean, Ives as a serious artist.
Just wanted you to know that!
Thanks, again,
Norman
I loved the NYer piece. I’ll listen to recordings in a new way, so thanks for that. I’m psyched to hear your Ives. For the record (heh), and this is a serious request, I would give a lot to hear the “perfect” Thoreau outburst with you talking over it. Please?
LOVED the New Yorker piece, Jeremy! Now I need to buy your Ives recording. And then enjoy hearing you play it quite differently someday soon.
A rhetorical question: why is it that providence so often bestows writerly gifts on those already in possession of musical ones? I suspect the answer has to do with the fact that at heart they must be much the same thing, but it breaks my heart to consider this as I am such a lumbering musician. In any case, I enjoyed your Concord essay almost as much as I have enjoyed your Concord recording. In fact, I am sure I will enjoy your recording more now.
I loved your New Yorker piece which introduced you to me as a fascinating writer as well as musician. I was even more pleased to learn you graduated from my alma mater Oberlin. Now I’d like to subscribe to your blog but can’t figure out how to do it. Am I missing something? (By the way, I also plan to seek out your recordings!)
I was so delighted to open the *New Yorker* and find a piece by one of my favorite writers (and certainly my favorite blogger). (“They finally discovered him!” was my thought–immediately followed by, “Whatever took them so long?!”)
Your article is moving and delightful. I’m so grateful that you’re a writer as well as a pianist. Thank you.
Having recently done time in a recording studio, crafting one of those conceptual artifacts, I’d say your New Yorker piece is less “obsessive and neurotic” than it is straight-up, unadorned reportage–the facts. It feels just like you say it does. We should all be grateful that our favorite recordings exist, given that most artists (across all genres) often felt/feel like destroying the evidence in fits of playback-induced dismay, horror, and/or shame. Thanks for undergoing the ordeal.
Hi Jeremy,
just finished the NYer article which was SO excellent. I was just speaking with a young pianist about recorded music–musical documentation–and now must send this on to him. You really got it down. In my own previous recording life I always had an itching urge to sabotage it all with something wild and live and, dare I say, ugly.
Sigh.
Keep it up–your writing is as wonderful as your playing. Thanks.
I found your New Yorker piece yesterday at 4 am, when I got up to make sure one of my cats, whom I’d accidentally double-dosed on heart medication, was still breathing. (He’s fine.) Exhausted and worried as I was, I became so engrossed in your story that I couldn’t put it down.
I was in charge of a museum chamber-music series for many years. After working with performers and calming (unconfessed) pre-concert nerves and the occasional qualms during intermission, I found that everything you wrote made brilliant sense to me — secrets, fears, and insecurities revealed to seem as obvious and natural as breathing.
I found myself thinking, “If he plays like he writes, he will always be worth hearing, even if he’s practicing scales or thinks he’s messing up. This guy is amazingly eloquent, honest, funny, and insightful.”
I’m delighted to find your blog, and since I love Concord, Massachusetts, and it’s history, I plan to listen to your CD very soon. I like Ives and haven’t heard him in a long time; he has humor among his other gifts, as do you. Thanks for writing that terrific essay!
I like your article in the New Yorker. I’m going to pick up a copy to read then send it to my friend. My brain has grown a few more cells since I’ve been reading your blogs which is about a year now; and I thought they’re a little too intellectual for me at first…. Beside the Ives recording, I’m going to get some other solo CDs of yours as well.
I second Daniel’s request. Unless you said something truly unseemly, perhaps it would be possible to post that “perfect” take here?
Like I said, I went right away to buy the New Yorker just to read your article since I could only read a small part of it online earlier. All I could say was “Wow! awesome writing!” That’s a very long essay for the magazine, so of course you’re excused for not blogging on time. I also listened to your Brahms’s Sonatas for Viola and Piano today and read the CD’s leaflet. Thanks!
Here’s what my mom said in an email this morning:
“Read Denk’s piece this morning. He’s a word artist as well as a musical one.”
Yes.
I noted earlier here that my new book (with Kerry Candaele) “Journeys With Beethoven” has a full chapter based on my lengthy interview with Jeremy. Now I’ve launched a daily Roll Over, Beethoven blog that you might enjoy
http://journeyswithbeethoven.blogspot.com/
And here’s an excerpt from interview with Jeremy for the book, as he comments on Beethoven’s opus 111 as “a piece I can’t leave behind. For one thing, he is revisiting all of his C-minor work — after all the sturm and drang, he’s coming back and sweeping all these old ideas into this. Everything in the first movement is about an onrushing, and then all these little moments of trying to stop. And that’s a very profound life statement that maybe young people are not quite so well attuned to, you know what I mean? Desperate attempts to extract repose from this onrush. Then those little stoppages explode into this endless C- minor river. And the way that river responds to the mini-stoppages, and then erases all memory of that.
“By then Beethoven was more and more concerned with the notion of returning after complete disintegration. And that’s not something you may recognize at certain times in your life, you don’t get all the resonances. You don’t feel as incredibly torn by it. I didn’t get that at the beginning but now it’s one of those weirdly supercharged pieces for me — the most difficult to get through without becoming emotional myself.”
Jeremy, you seem to like the magnificent flowing river and its branches which are sneaking out from everywhere which at times can be turbulent or peaceful, in describing the music. However, don’t know why, in Beethoven I only see the universe above; partly because from a movie I saw a long time ago when Beethoven the kid sat by the window and looked up the sky full of stars. My mind is set for that image when I listen to Beethoven’s. I’m not sure there’s a river up there, maybe a river of exploding stars or something….
I bought the New Yorker last week, and still haven’t read it. Looking forward to it.