Press.4.20.19

Jeremy Denk, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis to perform chamber music concert at Gaillard Center | Features | postandcourier.com

3/31/20, 12(01 PM

https://www.postandcourier.com/features/jeremy-denk-joshua-bell-steven-isserlis-to-perform-chamber-musicconcert-at-gaillard-center/article_81b87c9c-607f-11e9-8f20-1397f50bac5e.html

Jeremy Denk, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis to perform chamber music concert at Gaillard Center by adam parker aparker@postandcourier.com apr 20, 2019

Joshua Bell (from left), Jeremy Denk, Steven Isserlis. The trio will perform on April 27 at the Gaillard Center. shervin lainez/provided

Pianist Jeremy Denk and violinist Joshua Bell *rst performed together in Charleston at the 2004 Spoleto Festival USA. https://www.postandcourier.com/features/jeremy-denk-joshua-bell-stev…at-gaillard-center/article_81b87c9c-607f-11e9-8f20-1397f50bac5e.html

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Jeremy Denk, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis to perform chamber music concert at Gaillard Center | Features | postandcourier.com

3/31/20, 12(01 PM

“Josh’s mother decided we should play together before he did,” Denk said.

“I had been in Bloomington (Ind.) studying. His mother was still living in Bloomington and went to concerts and heard me.”

To celebrate Charles Wadsworth’s 75th birthday, the two men joined members of the chamber music team at Spoleto to honor the beloved founder of the series.

“We hit it o,,” Denk said. “He asked me to tour with him the next year.”

And that’s how a fruitful musical collaboration and friendship got started.

Bell and Denk will be back in Charleston, along with cellist Steven Isserlis, to perform an ambitious program of piano trios at 7:30 p.m.

April 27 at the Gaillard Center.

“There are a lot of barn burners, just pieces we all wanted to do, that we felt we could say something about,” Denk said. “It’s a big program. I have a feeling people will go home satis*ed, and I will go home exhausted.”

On tap is music by Mendelssohn, Rachmanino,, Shostakovich and Ravel, o,ering listeners a wide range of chamber music from the earliest part of the Romantic period to the latest.

“As with any chamber music group, we have ideas about where (the music) goes, what it means, and what it’s trying to do, and we *nd a way to unify around a single message,” Denk said.

All three musicians are known around the world as star performers. And all three have been to Spoleto Festival multiple times. Bell *rst came in the mid-1980s. Isserlis joined the Spoleto chamber music series in 1987.

https://www.postandcourier.com/features/jeremy-denk-joshua-bell-stev…at-gaillard-center/article_81b87c9c-607f-11e9-8f20-1397f50bac5e.html

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Jeremy Denk, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis to perform chamber music concert at Gaillard Center | Features | postandcourier.com

3/31/20, 12(01 PM

Geo, Nuttall, violinist with the St. Lawrence Quartet and director of the series since 2010, when he took over for Wadsworth, said all three performers are “justi*ably famous.” He has worked with Denk and Bell.

“From the beginning, both of those two guys are on a whole other plane,” Nuttall said. “They don’t mail it in ever.”

He said that the piano trios they will present show o, their various talents, but perhaps none more so than Denk, the brainy one of the bunch.

“He’s super smart,” Nuttall said. “He always had two or three books with him that I didn’t understand. ... He’s one of those guys who had zero interest in sports.”

Bell, instead, is a “violin geek” who plays on the Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius of 1713 and also on an instrument made by Brookyn-based star luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz. (Nuttall, too, plays on a Zygmuntowicz.)

“When I *rst played with Josh, he was already a huge star,” Nuttall said.

“But he was *rst about the music. He always took the music very seriously.”

Serious is what the audience will get Saturday.

“It’s a massive program,” Nuttall noted.

Denk, who also writes essays about music and is working on a memoir called “Every Good Boy Does Fine,” has been concentrating on music these days, not on his writerly panache.

https://www.postandcourier.com/features/jeremy-denk-joshua-bell-stev…at-gaillard-center/article_81b87c9c-607f-11e9-8f20-1397f50bac5e.html

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“I’m mostly practicing piano these days,” he said.

He has a lot to practice, including Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto.

“I love to play the ‘Emperor,’ ” he said. “One of the beautiful things about playing that piece is it’s a piece in many ways about color. It’s weird to say, but as Beethoven became deafer, the music became more about sound.”

He’s also got some Mozart to perform, including the Piano Concerto No. 25. Between concerts this summer, Denk plans on practicing Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.

But *rst comes a short tour with Isserlis and Bell; the trio will kick it o, at the Gaillard Center. The concert could be remembered as one of the year’s big classical music events.

“I do think people want concerts to be kind of a happening,” Denk said.

He strives to emphasize the perennial relevance of great music, and, for our purposes, the signi*cance of these piano trios.

“How do you make it feel like it was written yesterday? I have a natural sense of this music being very fresh. It feels to me very alive.”

Contact Adam Parker at aparker@postandcourier.com or 843-937-5902.

if you go What: A program of piano trios with violinist Joshua Bell, pianist Jeremy Denk and cellist Steven Isserlis.

Jeremy Denk, Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis to perform chamber music concert at Gaillard Center | Features | postandcourier.com

When: 7:30 p.m. April 27

Where: Gaillard Center, 95 Calhoun Street, Charleston

https://www.postandcourier.com/features/jeremy-denk-joshua-bell-stev…at-gaillard-center/article_81b87c9c-607f-11e9-8f20-1397f50bac5e.html

Price: $29-$110 More info: http://bit.ly/2Gl8BbS

3/31/20, 12(01 PM

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