Very often Bach is the base of a program of baroque music. He wanted to be, in this concert of the Violons du Roy imagined by the pianist Jeremy Denk, a culmination.
Bach not being a “beginning of things”, to make it succeed after having swept through seven centuries of music, it was necessary to resort to transcriptions, since during these seven centuries, musical expression was largely vocal, notably sacred.
Jeremy Denk’s contribution to the concert was therefore that of solo pianist and conductor in the Concertos BWV 1052 and 1053 of Bach, but also that of the transcriber for strings of works as unexpected as O virtus Sapientiae by Hildegard von Bingern (the antiphon being “sung” by the solo violin), a motet by William Byrd or a harmonically disconcerting madrigal by Carlo Gesualdo.
These clever artifices resulted not in Bach but, again, in a kind of adaptation, since a Bach keyboard concerto played on a hyper-gleaming Steinway is an esoteric concept in itself.
Sober and cheerful
In this vein, however, while we heard real horrors in this Bourgie room (Mozart with Bezuidenhout and Cohen), Jeremy Denk did his best, standing with his back to the audience, lid removed while the piano tuning seemed having removed a few harmonics from the treble or at least from the brilliance and volume to the sound.
Denk’s playing was playful, very articulated, decanted, able to instantly vary the intensity, between very sonorous cadences and an immediate fade with the orchestra. It is this spirit of joy, freedom and sharing that we remember because, regardless of the size of the instrument, it goes in the direction of the aesthetics of a concerto of the time.
Elsewhere, Denk, who presented his program making the effort to speak French, did not pretend to play the conductor and left Pascale Giguère to do the rest, including the Battle by Biber, sketched with all the humor required. The Self-Managed Violins were outstanding and carefully played along with the pianist in Bach.
A fine evening which, through its mixed audience success, proved once again that times are tough for concert organizers.
Jeremy Denk, Bach and the ancient worlds
Bingen: O virtus Sapientiae*. Byrd: Haec Dies*. Monteverdi: Zefiro torna e di soavi accenti*. Bach: Concerto for piano and strings in E, BWV 1053. Baby: Battalia at 10. Purcell: Fantasia a 4 n°2 in D minor, Z.739*. Dowland: Lachrimae Antiquae Novae (extract of Lachrimae or Seven Tears)*. Gesualdo: Moro, lasso, al mio duolo*. Bach: Concerto for Piano and Strings in D, BWV 1052. (* transcriptions for string orchestra). Les Violons du Roy, Pascale Giguère (solo violin), Jeremy Denk (piano and conductor). Bourgie Hall, Friday, March 18, 2022.