As I was leaving The Conrad Friday evening after experiencing Jeremy Denk’s knockout piano recital, I had but a single thought. What took the La Jolla Music Society almost eight years to invite Denk back to La Jolla to perform?
In May, 2017, Denk performed an astounding, unconventional program that displayed his bravura technique for the La Jolla Music Society (LJMS) at the La Jolla Presbyterian Church. This was during that interim period between the museum’s deconstruction of Sherwood Auditorium and the Music Society’s completion of The Conrad, so the Presbyterians generously hosted Denk’s recital in which he balanced familiar works by J. S. Bach and Schubert with an array of contemporary and 20th-century compositions influenced by American jazz and Ragtime.
Similarly, Denk’s Friday offering at The Conrad balanced an intriguing collection of ten shorter works by women composers with offerings by Brahms and Robert Schumann. Since Denk finished this recital with Robert Schumann’s much lauded Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17, he made the obvious choice to begin with Clara Schumann’s Romance in A Minor, Op. 21, No. 1. Although the scope of Clara’s Romance may not equal that of Robert’s Fantasy, it can claim an equal harmonic richness and an abundance of dreamy phrases that display authentic Romantic fervor.
Before Denk commenced his recital, he gave a concise overview of the music of its lesser-know women composers–Louise Farrenc, Amy Beach, Tania León, and Phyllis Chen–with a casual nonchalance that suggested he was simply chatting with a friend over a mid-morning cappuccino at an outdoor cafe on Prospect Street. But seated at the Steinway playing Cuban composer Tania León’s bravura Ritual or Missy Mazzoli’s demanding competition piece Heartbreaker, Denk unleashed a whirlwind of intensely focused energy channeled through his formidable technical prowess.
An astute programmer, Denk provided islands of melodic charm among his bravura feats, including a pair of Amy Beach’s shimmering etudes from her 1892 Four Sketches, Op. 15: “In Autumn” and “Dreaming.” Like the works of her French contemporary Cécile Chaminade—Denk included her her dazzling 1890 La Lisonjera—Beach’s music is experiencing a long overdue revival, safely emerging from the musical misogyny that has too long dismissed the music of female composers as mere salon music.
Without question the heart of Denk’s recital was his exquisite account of Johannes Brahms’ Four Pieces for Piano, Op. 119. This late in life collection published in 1893 proved to be the composer’s final contribution to the piano repertory, although some musicologists suspect the final E-flat major Rhapsody with its bumptious chordal theme was the reworking of a much earlier composition.
The delicate descending arabesques of Opus 119’s opening Intermezzo in B Minor conjure an Impressionist atmosphere that suggests Brahms may have encountered Debussy’s earliest piano collection, published just three years prior to Op. 119. Denk’s impeccable technical prowess easily subdued the restless figuration of the Intermezzo in E Minor and the Intermezzo in C Major, a turbulent scherzo of heroic proportions.
Eric Bromberger, the author of the Music Society’s printed program notes, quotes the mature Robert Schumann’s dissatisfaction with his youthful Fantasy in C Major, Op. 17: “The Fantasy is immature and unfinished . . .mostly reflections of my turbulent earlier life.” Bromberger attempts to dismiss the composer’s evaluation, but I would say Schumann was spot on. He could have edited this rambling 30-minute Fantasy to a more concise, brilliant 15-minute etude. In any case, Denk gave Schumann’s Fantasy the muscular yet deftly detailed account it deserves.
For his encore, Denk played Donald Lambert’s 1941 antic tear on Wagner’s “Pilgrim’s Chorus” from Tannhäuser, a piece he included in his 2017 La Jolla recital.
This recital was presented by the La Jolla Music Society at La Jolla’s Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center on January 10, 2025.