Jeremy Denk's Piano Recital at the Highline Ballroom

And yet another concert venue appears in New York City.  The High Line, as I've mentioned previously, is a new "park" running through the Chelsea neighborhood on the far West Side Side of Manhattan, occupying what used to be a set of elevated train tracks that were used to bring goods down to the grocery and meat packing districts of the far West Side.  Somebody has had the bright idea to take the second floor of an old industrial building in the neighborhood and to turn it into a performance/event space with full restaurant capacity.  The space appears to be quite versatile, being easily set up for dance events, theater, music....  Glancing through the calendar of upcoming events, it seems the Denk recital is unusual. The musical entertainment is more oriented towards popular music, including some very well-known names.  (The Wainwright family will be putting in an appearance, for example.)

For the Denk recital, the place was set up to resemble a nightclub.  One acquires general admission tickets on-line.  The place opens two hours before the concert.  There is a full menu and one has a meal while waiting for the event to begin.  The lights are quite dim, the tables candlelit, disco balls hanging eerily from the ceiling, the piano illuminated on the stage at the north end of the moderately large space, the bars along the west and east ends.  The audience begins to trickle in at 6 and by show-time at 8, the place is packed.

Denk comes out in t-shirt and jeans and, with the assistance of a microphone, initiates an informal recital program with some comments about each of the pieces as he goes along.  This is a no-nonsense, uncompromising recital program.  Bach's Partita No. 3, Ives's Piano Sonata No. 1, a brief intermission, then Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasy, Op. 61, and finally Liszt's Rhapsodie Espagnole.  The program is perhaps 20 minutes shorter than a recital one would encounter at Carnegie Hall and there is no encore despite the tumultuous response of the audience to the Liszt - for the simple reason that there is a dance event scheduled at 11, so they must clear the hall and remove the tables rapidly.

What about the musical experience (apart from Denk's performance)?  The acoustic would be fine for many kinds of performance, but it was not for a piano recital.  The room is a bit too small to comfortably accomodate the sound of a grand piano in the hands of somebody who is a strong player.  This may have been worsened by inadvertant amplification.  (Was that standing microphone that Denk used for his comments left on during the playing?  It seemed possible to me, given the somewhat odd balances and oppressive loudness.)  Perhaps they thought some amplification was necessary because of the loudness of the air conditioning system, as well as the background noises of an active restaurant business.  While Denk played, waiters moved about, the bartenders continued to operate (including occasional noises of dipping into the ice supply or shaking mixed drinks), the doors to the hall slammed shut from time to time (the staff needs to be trained to handle that door quietly during performance), the doors to the kitchen swung open and shut (why don't they oil the hinges before a concert and tell the kitchen staff to keep their mouths shut?) -- so there is plenty of background noise to accompany what the artist on stage is doing.

About the artist:  Denk played very well.  His Bach was vigorous, rythmically alive, precise.  The Ives was done with full spirit, fast-paced, bringing out the thematic sources of the music in a way that can be buried in the various recorded performances I've heard.  (The last live performance I can recall hearing was by William Masselos when I was an undergraduate at Cornell in the early 1970s - this is a rarity on recital programs).  The Chopin was the most hurt by the ambient noise, since quieter moments had to compete for attention, but Denk clearly loves the piece and communicated that.  Finally, the Liszt, despite some rather prominent dropped notes along the way, was exhilarating in its sheer virtuosity.

Is this a good place to hear a piano recital?  That's a difficult question to answer.  There is much extraneous noise and movement to divert one's attention.  On the other hand, hearing the music played in that space with that kind of audience, does provide a different sort of perspective.  One goes to an outdoor musical event knowing that one will not hear music under ideal concert-hall conditions, but it can nonetheless be a satisfying experience on its own terms.  That's true as well of the Highline Ballroom.  It's a night out in New York.  I do think the operators of the space could take some steps through training of their staff to lessen somewhat the distractions, but capitalist concerns intrude - much of the movement is associated with the ongoing restaurant business activities which are undoubtedly a major source of the revenue that runs the place, since the ticket price for entry is modest. 

Finally -- some enterprising record company should record Jeremy Denk in the Ives Sonata!!!!