An overcooked meal made almost entirely of starters
Always the same, always different: that, in a nutshell, is the mystery of the musical form known as “variations”. More than enough mystery, you might think, to sustain three themed concerts across a single day – which is what American pianist Jeremy Denk offered us on Sunday at Milton Court concert hall, in the company of three musician friends.
Denk is probably the best known of a new breed of classical musician that wants to shine a new light on pieces by putting them in surprising juxtapositions. And just in case we miss the point, they tell us in animated tones exactly what the connections are.
Done well, the method can lead to illuminating moments when pieces from different eras seem to speak to each other across the centuries. That rarely happened here, because Denk overcomplicated the picture. The first concert focused on variations on Death, the second on variations of Virtuosity, the third on variations on Heartbreak and Hope. It looked good on paper, but in practice it felt odd. The day proved that you can base a concert on a warm human theme such as “heartbreak”, or a fascinating formal idea like variations, but not both at once.
The confusion of themes was one problem; another was that so many short pieces end-to-end was like a meal made entirely of starters. Still, there were some good things in the two concerts I attended. The variations by the 19th-century Belgian Henri Vieuxtemps on Yankee Doodle were thrown off with barnstorming panache by violinist Karen Gomyo and Denk; and cellist Julian Steckel and Denk then found a very different tone of salon suavity, for Mendelssohn’s Variations Concertantes.
In the evening concert, Variations of Heartbreak and Hope, all three players brought out the storminess and tragic weight in the variation movement from Brahms’s second piano Trio. In Monteverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa, they were joined by soprano Measha Brueggergosman, who found a movingly stifled tone for the nymph’s lament, as if her feelings
You can base a concert on a warm human theme or a fascinating formal idea, but not both at once
of abandonment were too strong to be uttered.
The best moment came last, when Denk gave a performance of Beethoven’s final piano sonata. The contrast between the urgency and drama of the opening movement and the sublime otherworldliness of the second was drawn with tremendous intensity. Finally, we could enjoy an entire piece, forget about themes, and let the music speak for itself.