Jeremy Denk
I've learned a lot from being a chameleon, sort of adopting the musical personalities of who I was playing with.
I was a kid with a lot of different, strange interests - kind of crazy.
I'm one of those pianists who tends to ignore every existing recording and lots of traditions about playing pieces when I start.
It's long been my dream to have myself declared incompetent so I could just practice all day, and blog, and not have to take care of any normal life things.
Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to go to Oberlin and wanted the liberal arts. Obviously I really get intense pleasure out of drawing connections between pieces and poems and literature and ideas.
Perhaps the most serious complaint you could make about Bach is that he has every quality of humanity except imperfection.Collection: Imperfection
As you deal with thumb-crossings, or fingerings for the F-sharp-minor scale, or chromatic scales in double thirds, it is hard to accept that these will eventually allow you to probe eternity in the final movement of Beethoven's last sonata. Imagine that you are scrubbing the grout in your bathroom and are told that removing every last particle of mildew will somehow enable you to deliver the Gettysburg Address.Collection: Finals
The only person who can solve the labyrinth of yourself is You.Collection: Labyrinth
Sometimes you wish you could go back and ask your teachers again to guide you; but up there onstage, exactly where they always wanted you to be, you must simply find your way. They have given all the help they can; the only person who can solve the labyrinth of yourself is you.Collection: Teacher
If there's one thing I feel very strongly about, it's that there shouldn't be a distinction between pianists who play Ligeti and those who play Chopin. It might seem that they involve different skill sets, but I don't think that's true: whether playing Ives or Bach or Beethoven, you must bring the same imagination, the same sensitivity, and an ability to deal with same kinds of musical problems. The method behind my madness, anyway, is to keep plugging away at this idea.Collection: Thinking
It's no accident that Op. 111 attracts literary attention. Though it's music, it doesn't quite behave like it. It seems to be charged with meaning, to communicate in symbols, ciphers, clues.Collection: Attention