Jeremy Denk’s accolades include a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and a Musical America Instrumentalist of the Year award, and this Durham-born artist more than lives up to the acclaim. The New York Times hailed Denk as “a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs, in whatever combination — both for his penetrating intellectual engagement with the music and for the generosity of his playing.” That engagement comprises both his deeply felt performances and his sensitive writings about music for The New Yorker and other publications.

This visit features three spectacular showpieces for solo piano: Beethoven’s tumultuous Seventeenth Sonata; Schubert’s virtuoso Wanderer Fantasy; and Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata, a musically revolutionary portrait of Emerson, Thoreau, and other writers of the American Transcendentalist movement. Denk has become a tireless advocate for the revival of Ives’ work, particularly with his fervent performance of this piece, which he describes as “one of the most profoundly nostalgic and tender projects in all of music.”

Beethoven: Sonata No. 17 in D Minor, op. 31, no. 2 (“Tempest”)
Schubert: Wanderer Fantasy, D. 760
Ives: Concord Sonata