In the two decades since he claimed Juilliard’s venerable Piano Recital Debut Award, Durham native Jeremy Denk has become one of his generation’s most in-demand instrumentalists and, at The New Yorker, one of its most astute critics. He has performed with the world’s greatest orchestras, served as the music director of the Ojai Music Festival, and developed ingenious concert programs. Such efforts have earned Denk both the Avery Fisher Prize and a MacArthur fellowship, dual testaments to his eminence as a musician and thinker. Denk is “a model of how performers can both inform and entertain an audience” (The New York Times).

In Durham, Denk explores the music of Beethoven and his acolytes. He begins with Beethoven’s variations on the patriotic Rule, Britannia before jumping two centuries to John Adams’ I Still Play, a tribute to Nonesuch Records impresario Bob Hurwitz. Denk rounds out the program with Mendelssohn’s Variations Sérieuses; Beethoven’s Eroica variations; and Schumann’s Fantasie in C, which quotes An die ferne Geliebte.

Beethoven: Five Variations on “Rule, Britannia” in D Major

John Adams: I Still Play

Mendelssohn: Variations sérieuses

Beethoven: Variations and Fugue in E-flat Major, “Eroica,” Op. 35

Schumann: Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17