http://jeremydenk.net/blog The glamorous life and thoughts of a concert pianist. Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:32:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Recently, I came across an essay entitled Whose Brahms Is It Anyway? Puzzling: I assumed Brahms, that most organic of composers, had been purchased by Monsanto long ago. This essay has an alarming thesis: that the Brahms B-flat Concerto has been getting longer. The ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/12/18/whose-brahms/ At least Hester Prynne got an “A” for her adultery. I’ve searched the alphabet up and down, and I can’t find a letter to testify to my shame. Of all the sinful confessions of Think Denk, ranging from lonely Cheetos to promiscuous metaphors, this is the darkest ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/12/10/schuberts-killer-abs/ When I mention to people I’ve played Chopin on my recitals lately, I tend to get a curious reaction--a slightly sour look with a parental, passive-aggressive question mark swirling around in it. Oh, dear, really? From their oblique remarks I glean an implication: why would you play ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/11/30/chopins-for-dummies/ Regular readers might recall, I won’t ever forget, that I went not so long ago to visit the composer Leon Kirchner, and he jokingly compared me to Walt Whitman. I hadn’t read Whitman's verse since high school, and even at my hormonal heights, penning maudlin teen poetry by the ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/09/17/missing-me-one-place-search-another/ Something leapt out at me in the President's speech last night: My American ingenuity was stirred and perhaps even plucked; well heck, goshdarnit!, why not craft my own healthcare bill? Everybody's doing it. How hard can it really be? ... 111th Congress 1st Session HR _________, To provide affordable mental health care ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/09/10/legislating-from-my-bench/ A week of 90s in Seattle ... my hostess and I are both heading down delirium’s loopy driveway. The notes on the piano that I don't feel like practicing swim in the heat. I flee to an air conditioned coffeeshop. Outside, nothing but blue sky and hipsters ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/08/05/hot-seattle-straight-up/ The other night I woke up from a vivid dream in which Anne Midgette was trying to prove that Charles Ives was gay using musical examples from his First Piano Sonata. The main thrust of this dream (so to speak) was clearly a reproach: I need to finish memorizing that ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/05/23/bucket-of-truth/ In April, I drifted off course, steadily. I can’t decide if I was the Titanic or the Exxon Valdez. Icebergs massed around me in the gloom of my pleasures. The boat needed a captain, but the captain was tired of giving orders, had had enough, and perhaps ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/05/11/yet-more-verbiage-about-the-goldberg-variations/ Well, I was just sitting round the apartment on my same old butt, eating crappy Indian takeout, looking longingly at the box of wine my friend C sent me, etc. etc., when I decided to do some due diligence regarding my exciting assigment as vlogger for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/04/10/furry-muses/ Samuel Beckett, 1932, trying to describe the poems he's written that seem better to him, less "constructed": I cannot explain very well to myself what they have that distinguishes them from the rest, something arborescent or of the sky, not Wagner, not clouds on wheels; written above an abscess and not ... http://jeremydenk.net/blog/2009/04/06/the-most-concise-brilliant-put-down-of-wagner-ever/