Jeremy Denk | Oxford Piano Festival

Each year from 1726 to 1732, Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a Partita for keyboard that elaborated on the series of baroque dance forms standardised by his colleague Johann Kuhnau. Bach’s works, however, were exceptional and only got more so – mining new emotional depth and technical flair from ostensibly simple dance music with levels of perfection that Bach would never surpass. The composer’s first biographer Forkel wrote that the Partitas sound ‘always new’. Jeremy Denk – ‘a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs’ (New York Times) – comes to the University Church to play a score Bach intended for the delight of the player, but which extends far beyond.