Two years later, Jeremy Denk returned to the Klavier-Festival Ruhr once again, this time with a recital program so remarkable that Deutschlandfunk dedicated an entire broadcast to it. Johann Sebastian Bach was featured alongside Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a key figure in the history of Black musicians in Britain. Beethoven’s final piano sonata was juxtaposed with the battle music The Battle of Manassas, composed at the start of the American Civil War by Thomas Wiggins, an African American slave.

Performances at the Klavier-Festival Ruhr are not only an opportunity to discover unconventional and highly engaging program concepts but also to experience an artist who remains relatively unknown in Germany. This is likely due to the fact that Jeremy Denk rarely appears on European concert stages, making his festival performances a rare opportunity to hear him live. In his native United States, however, the pianist is already a major figure in the classical music scene. He is one of those artists “you have to hear, no matter what they play,” as The New York Times put it.

Born in 1970 in North Carolina, Denk did not come from a musical family—a rarity among classical musicians. Nonetheless, he found his path, studying at the renowned Juilliard School in New York, where he now resides, as well as at Indiana University under György Sebők. He later dedicated his autobiographical memoir Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons to his former teacher. The book is a compelling testament to the fact that Denk is as eloquent in writing about music as he is in performing it.

For his return to the Klavier-Festival Ruhr—which has become a staple in his concert calendar—Denk has curated, almost inevitably, a quintessential Denk program. It is framed by the music of composer couple Robert and Clara Schumann, who once mentored the young Johannes Brahms—who, in a tragic twist, fell in love with his friend’s wife. While the second half of the concert is dedicated entirely to this “bromance” between Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, the first half expands the spotlight on Clara Schumann—one of the few successful female composers of her time—by presenting works from a diverse group of female composers. These include Meredith Monk, a pioneer of vocal performance art largely shaped by women; Amy Beach, a composer and women’s rights advocate who was the first American woman to write a symphony; and Ruth Crawford Seeger, an “ultramodernist” who deliberately distanced herself from the classical European tradition.

Once again, Jeremy Denk extends an invitation to explore rarely performed repertoire while simultaneously discovering new perspectives on the familiar.

Photo: Michael Wilson