Concert Jeremy Denk

Two seasons ago, the New York pianist Jeremy Denk gave a phenomenal performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Denk is now continuing his exploration of the ‘theme with variations’ phenomenon. He is stopping to reflect on Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, absolute masters of the variation form. Whereas Mozart’s Variations were still improvised demonstrations of virtuoso ‘Fingerfertigkeit’, Beethoven raised the genre to a higher level. The way in which he loosened the connection between the overarching theme and the variations in his ‘Diabelli Variations’ was unprecedented. He thus paved the way for Schumann’s schizophrenic character variations. The pianist is expected to bring a theatre full of characters onto the stage and in the meantime, to retain his overview of the work as a whole…

On Thursday 19 October, Jeremy Denk will speak about his programme in a lecture recital with musical excerpts performed live.