Stefan Jackiw, Violin
Jeremy Denk, Piano

When insurance-salesman-by-day/modernist-composer-by night Charles Ives invited violinist Franz Milcke to read through his violin sonatas, he recollects that his friend “didn’t even get through the first page… After he went, I had a kind of feeling which I’ve had off and on… Are my ears on wrong? No one else seems to hear it the same way.” Leave it to PUC fan-favorite, Avery Fisher Career Grant-winning violinist Stefan Jackiw and MacArthur “Genius” Award-winning pianist Jeremy Denk to prove that all was quite well with Ives’ ears as they skillfully guide us, in reverse order, from the raucous fourth violin sonata to the exuberant spontaneity of the first. By interspersing Ives’ sonatas with the popular Americana classics—hymns, songs, marches—that he imbued in these works with some help from members of our own Princeton University Glee Club, the duo humanizes and contextualizes some of the most substantial, yet rarely heard, music in the violin repertory by an American composer.