Denk is joined by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra for two Mozart concertos – No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 and No. 20 in D minor, K. 466 – bookending the composer’s solo Rondo in A minor, K. 511. Denk says of K. 503 in his liner note: “As I write these words… the world as it used to be has vanished, a pandemic world has settled in, and – as we keep telling ourselves – we have to live with uncertainty. Which has always seemed to me one of the key messages of this great concerto, so different from the rest, and so full of the love of its creator. 503 has very few tunes,” he continues. “This may explain why it is not one of the most popular of his concertos… You feel that Mozart is instructing you to listen more deeply, away from ornament, behind the frills, to realize that music is more than an assembly of charming and diverting tunes, to think about ideas beneath the surface, forces and principles. The D minor Concerto is a far more famous and popular piece than 503, partly because it is what it promises to be. If 503 proposes grand, certain chords and then undermines them, 466 takes the opposite approach: it starts from a distilled unease which accumulates into chords and statements, outbursts of anger. A purer tragedy – and a clearer narrative,” he says. Denk says of Mozart’s Rondo in A minor, K. 511, “Mozart wrote so many sad songs in his short life: laments of ardent young tenors, of innocent maids, of jilted Countesses, sorrows across the human spectrum, across class and age and mindset, giving voice to regrets vast and small. But in this case I’d argue he does something different – a piece about the nature of melancholy, a sadness (if you like) about sadness.”
Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists. Winner of a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and the Avery Fisher Prize, Denk was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Denk returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and in recent seasons has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Cleveland Orchestra, as well as on tour with Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. He is a frequent collaborator with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, serving as an SPCO Artistic Partner since 2014, and has led the orchestra from the piano in unconducted performances of a broad range of works, including concertos by Schumann, Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach, as well as chamber music by Ligeti, Ives, Janáček, and Bartók.
