Jeremy Denk’s High-Profile Summer Includes Hollywood Bowl Debut and Mostly Mozart Appearances

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“Hearing Mr. Denk’s bracing, effortlessly virtuosic, and utterly joyous performance,
one would never guess how phenomenally difficult the piano part is.”– New York Times


Pianist Jeremy Denk looks forward to a high-profile summer across the U.S., performing works by Beethoven and John Adams at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival (Aug 12-13) before playing more Beethoven for his debut performance at the Hollywood Bowl (Aug 18). He also plays a typically wide range of repertoire at top chamber music festivals, from Brahms and Ives in Seattle (July 15-17) to Brahms, Fauré, and Weinberg in Santa Fe (Aug 3-7).

For Mostly Mozart, Denk performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in an all-Beethoven program with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra under Louis Langrée. Before each of the concerts, which take place in Avery Fisher Hall at New York’s Lincoln Center on August 12 and 13, audiences will have the chance to hear Denk in a 7pm pre-concert recital playing John Adams’s Phrygian Gates – the pulsing, 22-minute solo piece that was one of the composer’s first breakthroughs. Adams has said that the work “requires a pianist capable of considerable physical endurance and with an ability to sustain long arches of sound.” Such intensity and commitment are hallmarks of Denk’s performances, the New York Times noting that his recital in last summer’s Mostly Mozart Festival had “an explosive ferocity and a fragile delicacy that were thrilling to witness.”

At the Hollywood Bowl on August 18, Denk performs the solo piano part in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy (in a program that includes the related Symphony No. 9, “Choral”). The pianist’s partners for the event are the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Los Angeles Master Chorale, conducted by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. It was with Beethoven that Denk made his L.A. Philharmonic debut this spring, stepping in at the eleventh hour to replace Martha Argerich with conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The Los Angeles Times reported: “Denk unravels mysteries. He commands an impressive clarity of tone and thought. He brings out delicious details. In many passages, his fingers catch the sparkle in his eye.”

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