Jeremy Denk

Like the author, I grew up in New Mexico and found it to be a lovely–if somewhat limited–place to grow up for a gay boy with great ambitions. That is likely where the commonalities of Denk and I end. But still, what an aspiring professional pianist needs to succeed–in Las Cruces, at the great conservatory of Oberlin, and in front of numerous teachers–and how to get there form the narrative of this title. I just finished it at the front end of my holiday break, and wish there were 20 more chapters.… (más)

Discursive, enthusiastic, ebullient, deeply knowledgeable and a sparkling writer, Denk has cracked open a door for me (a little way!) to the mystery of musicianship. I am one of those "I know nothing about music but I know what I like" people, and what I like is classical music. I know more about visual arts, and have long harbored the notion that artists' eyes simply operate differently from most peoples'. Denk shows us how musicians' ears, brains, and muscles operate differently too. From boyhood on, he hears and feels and responds to music note by note, vibration by vibration, schooling his fingers and wrists to influence and connect (or separate, or delay, or modulate) each note to aspire to some mental image of how it should sound and what those notes "want to do," and manages to explain that experience in words someone like me can understand. His parents - in a long and difficult marriage - seem somewhat puzzled by what son Jeremy wants to do, but they buy him lessons, a piano, ferry him off to competitions and teachers, through long years of learning. Denk pays tribute to his many teachers and their varied eccentricities, insights, contradictions, encouragements and browbeating - with great affection and gratitude for what he learned from them even as they made him cry or rage. He is disarmingly frank about his own foibles and foolishness throughout this coming-of-age-and-out memoir without ever drowning out the music. He goes into musicologist mode in several chapters on harmony, melody and rhythm that remain well beyond my comprehension, but is slily trying to tie these principles in to the life story he is telling.

I chuckled when he complained about Bach's Goldberg Variations and how the trouble with them is everyone constantly asking which Glenn Gould version you prefer. I have long held a firm opinion on that. Then I found Denk's own recording, listened to it, and recoiled... nothing like either, and I didn't like it. But then I began to apply a little of what I learned from Denk himself in this engaging book as I listened, and thought I began to hear what he might be doing, and my appreciation vaulted. To be entertained and educated - nice work, Jeremy Denk.… (más)