Magazine tip: "Flight of the Concord"

Jeremy Denk

The New Yorker (2/6/12)

Lucky music fans here have been able to hear pianist Jeremy Denk perform the music of Charles Ives twice at Musical Masterworks in Old Lyme. Almost equally engrossing (and far less calendar-driven) is Denk's piece in the Feb. 6 New Yorker, in which he chronicles the making of his marvelous CD recording of Ives' monumental Concord Sonata. The engaging article tracks Denk's process from his youthful Ives addiction to the agonizing final editing process, and he writes with all the wit, snarkiness and insight of Ives himself. He draws the image of a river as an analogy for Ives' unpredictability, cross-currents and musical eddies: "His rivers aren't constrained by human desires and stories; they sing the beauty of their own randomness and drift." The essay is intensely personal, even confessional, chock-a-block full of one-liners and an artist's insight into the great compromise of turning the wild explosiveness of this music into a digital artifact "in an annoying plastic cover that takes ages to unwrap."

- MILTON MOORE