To call Jeremy Denk a gifted pianist and musi-


cian, is to set unnecessary limitations. Alchemy comes a little closer to describing what happens when he sits down at a keyboard—transmuting long dead composers’ notes into magnificent harmonies—music that seems to slip the bonds of our earthly plane. Music that is truly transformative is a rarity. When


you’re in the presence of that moment, you know it. Not just because you hear beautiful notes played well, but because you are viscerally experiencing the deep structures and meaning behind those notes. The ghosts of the composers’ desire and intent, flow off the page, merging with that of the performer as they both disappear into music’s mystic charm. It’s alchemy, I tell you.


I’m always curious to know when an artist makes their first connection with their particular instrument, in your case, the piano. Do you have a story you’d like to share about that? I’ve actually been recently writing about that a


THE LANGUAGE OF THE COMPOSER, TO SORT OF VANISH INTO IT.”


MAKING, HOW YOU SURRENDER TO


WE TALKED ABOUT THE ZEN OF MUSIC


great deal. The bookshelf and the record shelf were all one sacred zone in our house growing up. It was a very important place for me to sit... In front of that record shelf in my pajamas and flip through the records. I still


remember vividly the cover art of each of those records, things like Mahler’s First Symphony, the Organ Symphony of Saint-Saëns’s. I used to dance around the house a lot to Tchaikovsky’s B Flat Piano Concerto. (Laughs) I’m enjoying that visual very much. I remember LPs as well and listening to them on the HiFi console...And the dancing. Those records had a very important meaning and


photography by michael wilson


they were very important friends to me early on. We also had a little spinet [piano] in the house and I started banging on it at some point and apparently asked for lessons around five. I think I’d have to say that it really started with the records and certain sort of mystical pieces…The Mahler especially. My Dad used to sit me to the couch and we’d listen to Mahler together, which is of course completely inappropriate for a 3-year-old. (Laughs)


Was there a moment at which you understood that the piano was to be your career? I’d have to say Oberlin [College and Conserva-


tory]. I was studying chemistry and piano at the same time. I went to college when I was very young and it was a little bit of a “deer in the headlights” situation. After a year or two of doing them both, I realized: a) that I really hated chemistry and b) that I fit in to the musical world of Oberlin and that I had something to offer. I knew then it would definitely be my life in some fashion or other. It’s fascinating that you studied chemistry, such a technical language. Though in many ways, music follows a similar structure and technicality when you break it down. Absolutely. I do like looking at how a piece of


music is put together and sort of reverse engineering it. How the composer assembled it, what are the parts and how do they work together to create such amazing effects. That’s a part of what performers do, whether consciously or subconsciously. They get at the heart of the piece and try to recreate it. I sometimes call it the reanimating of Frankenstein. It’s a terrible image in a way, but you have this piece of music on a piece of paper, sort of dead there and you have to “re-find” it. In your Every Good Boy Does Fine piece in The New Yorker, you discussed the idea that every lesson and every experience transforms an artist. Is there something that stands out as a major influence for you? I wrote about Sebők [Hungarian pianist György


Sebők from Indiana University], who was quite amazing in terms of that. He changed my whole way of thinking about playing the piano—even more profoundly—about what the point of making music is at all. We talked about the Zen of music making, how you surrender to the language of the composer...To sort of vanish into it. It was very beautiful and a very important lesson to me, in the sense of searching after the given truth of a phrase. I took a tremendous amount from that and then


in the end, I needed to get out from under his influences in a way. I began to play and imitate him and that never works. I had to remove myself from the music and then it took a while to find my own voice again. To see what I really wanted from music for myself, what I wanted to communicate to the audience. Why, 80 percent of the time when you go to a classical concert, do you feel that there was some sort of veil around the music that you love? Then, how do you break that veil?


JANUARY 2016 |


JANUARY 2016 | RAGE monthly


monthly


29


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