New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Jeremy Denk launched Bach's Well-Tempered Lens, a three-part series of online events for WNYC/WQXR's The Greene Space in New York City, with "The Well-Tempered Clavier's Greatest Hits" on Tuesday. The ninety-minute event, from his barn in upstate New York, was a deep dive into several moments from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book I, with Denk at the piano performing and doing analysis and interpretation. You can watch it below.
Denk says of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in the program: "When I started practicing it, I felt that I was plugged into a kind of contentment that I wasn't used to having, maybe something I would find with yoga or some other meditation. It made me feel a kind of happiness and a kind of at-oneness with time that I wasn't really used to. And I would become very annoyed when I had to go do real life things like the grocery shopping or cooking or any other thing. I just wanted to be back at home with my Bach."
The series continues with "The Mysterious Life of J.S. Bach" on Monday, April 27, exploring a life that was almost as mysterious as Shakespeare's, and "How to Think Like Bach" on Monday, May 11, part discussion, part listening session examining what the human mind does when hearing Bach.
"Listening to Jeremy Denk play Bach," says Jennifer Sendrwo, the Greene Space Executive Producer, "is a powerful antidote to life's chaos, bringing people together to revel in music that transcends time and continues to inspire joy and provoke our curiosity."
Jeremy Denk recorded Bach's Goldberg Variations for an album released on Nonesuch Records in 2013, and performed Bach's Chromatic
Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903, on his 2019 album, c. 1300-c. 2000. He can be heard performing John Adams's "I Still Play (Pocket Variations)" on the upcoming I Still Play, an album of solo piano compositions by artists who have recorded for Nonesuch, written in honor of the label's longtime President Bob Hurwitz.
