Lammermuir Festival Concert

Fri 6 Sept 3pm

‘I love to play Ives because he’s after things that most composers don’t dare to attempt, and so he gets to emotional places and states that other composers can’t find.’ (Jeremy Denk).

For Denk, Ives is one of ‘the original American Originals.’ His exploration of the four Ives Violin Sonatas with Polish violinist Maria Wloszczowska takes us right to the nub of what makes this extraordinary genius tick: his deep humanity as well as his maverick craziness, his constant reference back to hymns, popular songs and marching bands remembered from his New England childhood.

Alongside the sonatas there will be readings, a band plays some of Ives’s marches and a choir sings hymns as a backdrop to the wonderfully rich, layered textures of Ives’s musical thought. Denk says ‘while driving me crazy, he reminds me why I play the piano at all’