Tim Tai, Senior Photographer

On Saturday, foremost American pianist Jeremy Denk delivered a vibrant and eclectic program in Battell Chapel that paid homage to the life and legacy of composer Charles Ives, in celebration of the composer’s 150th birthday.

Denk, well-known for his interpretations of Ives, was the perfect performer to honor one of the trailblazers of experimental classical music. In a rich 120-minute program spanning works from Beethoven to Nina Simone, Denk took listeners through the grand history of American music and the many influences on Ives’ work, finishing with a stunning performance of the seminal Sonata No.2 “Concord, Mass., 1840–60.” 

Ives is remembered as the leading American composer of art music of the 20th century. Born in Danbury, Connecticut, Ives was deeply connected to New Haven and attended Yale as an undergraduate from 1894 to 1898. 

At Yale, Ives played varsity football aside from his musical studies and work as a church organist. Saturday’s concert in Battell Chapel was a nod to the many times Ives played in the very same venue during his undergraduate years. 

The first half of the concert opened and closed with two of Beethoven’s three late sonatas, known for their unconventional structures and foray into experimentation. 

In his introduction of the piece, Denk told the audience that he had made a last-minute decision to replace the Beethoven Sonata No. 27, Op. 90 on the program with the Sonata No. 30, Op. 109. While the former was written in Beethoven’s middle period, the latter is a true sonata in his late style.

The impromptu change seeped into Denk’s performance of the Op. 109, which ultimately paled in comparison to his sublime interpretation of the Op. 110 later in the evening. Even so, the intention behind the change was clear, a distinctive tribute to the influence of Beethoven’s late style on early Modernist composers. In the other pieces on the program to follow, listeners could easily find Beethoven’s traces in their use of counterpoint, non-linear structures and deeply emotional introspection.

The next four pieces on the program pivoted to works by pioneering American composers, leading with “Bethena, A Concert Waltz” by Scott Joplin. Known as the “King of Ragtime,” Joplin was a contemporary of Ives and would have influenced Ives’ early embrace of rag.

The waltz is the first work Joplin composed after the early loss of his second wife Freddie, and is tinged by a delicate melancholy with a key change to the minor midway through. While lacking in the swingy syncopation characteristic of rag, Denk’s performance was especially sensitive with a lingering, contemplative rubato. 

Throughout the concert, Denk often turned to the audience directly — an unconventional move for most concert pianists — at times overcome with emotion, at times playful, as if to say, “Did you hear that?” 

Denk followed with “The Banjo,” Op. 15 by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, a direct precursor to rag with a distinctive West African influence, and “Just in Time” by Nina Simone, an iconic interdisciplinary artist who Denk observed always reminds him of Ives. 

The final American piece of the four was the mischievous “The Poltergeist” from “Three Ghost Rags,” by William Bolcom. Denk’s joy while performing was palpable, his feet moving on the pedals as if dancing and his rambunctious finale roused laughter from the audience.

Finally, Denk closed the first half of the evening with an exquisite interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 31, Op. 110. With a masterful control over the rubato, he took listeners from a “German drunken dance” to the dying “Arioso dolente,” followed by a technically excellent fugue that was a revival, like the first buds pushing out of the earth in spring.

The second half of the concert belonged completely to Ives with Denk’s obliterating “Concord” Sonata. Widely regarded as the foremost American sonata, the piece is both a technical tour de force and a philosophical journey. 

The sonata reflects Ives’ fascination with the school of Transcendentalism and moves through four movements inspired by key American literary figures: the Impressionistic opening of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the fantastical and satirical scherzo of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the idealist, pastoral Alcotts, and the meditative final movement for Henry Thoreau. In pursuit of the ephemerality of the Transcendentalists, the piece is highly difficult to interpret, full of sections that lack barlines and phantoms of suggestions. 

The “Concord” is also a quintessential example of Ives’ love for quotation, with Beethoven motifs sprinkled between long and tricky passages — audience members were delighted by the continuous arrival of the famous four-note “Fate” motif from his Symphony No. 5. The influence of the American ragtime composers heard earlier in the evening was also clear in the climactic “Hawthorne” movement, full of lightning-fast syncopation and rhythmic play.

As Denk performed, it became strikingly obvious that the first half of the concert was only the appetizer course — the Ives was the feast. Denk moved through the dense and physically demanding piece with stunning technique and a sense of play. His interpretation was nuanced despite the extreme complexity of Ives’ radical style, at once bringing out the tenderness of “The Alcotts” with exceptional tonal control and flying through the virtuosic, vicious humor of “Hawthorne.”

When the final notes of the “Concord” faded, silence rang as if the entire concert hall was coming out of a trance. The audience erupted into a standing ovation, calling Denk back four times with unyielding applause. 

In the aftermath, the buzz of the concert hall was one in which everyone was aware they had witnessed something profound and cathartic together, yet struggled to put words to.

For those in attendance, it was a night of transformation, a reminder that the spirit of Ives still lives on — not only in the University’s history but deservedly in the canon and the very essence of American classical music. The performance was part of a weekend of special events co-hosted by the School of Music and the Schwarzman Center.

Battell Chapel was constructed as Yale’s Civil War Memorial between 1874 and 1876.