Briefly Noted: Hamelin Surveys Fauré

Fauré, Nocturnes and Barcarolles / Dolly Suite, Marc-André Hamelin, Cathy Fuller (released on September 1, 2023) Hyperion CDA68331/2 | 163'40"

Marc-André Hamelin has made a name for himself by playing extremely difficult music with ease and musicality. The latest in the Canadian-born pianist's excellent series of deeply probing recitals of unusual music, all on the Hyperion label, is devoted to Gabriel Fauré, specifically to all thirteen of the French composer's Nocturnes and all thirteen of his Barcarolles. Hamelin played a few of these pieces during his most recent appearance in the area, last year on the Candlelight Concert Society's series. (He had just put this recording in the can the previous July and September, in London.)

Fauré apparently disdained programmatic titles, and the genre of nocturne and barcarolle were instead suggested by publishers: the composer's son Philippe famously joked that if left to his own devices, Fauré would have called every piano piece "Piano Piece No. so-and-so." Yet while the nocturnes are not all placid and nocturnal, the Barcarolles are set in the expected compound meter, like the Venetian gondolier songs for which the genre is named. Hamelin approaches these often melancholic, curious works with tasteful reserve, never overstating but leaving no question of technical mastery over them. The stylistic development of harmonic vocabulary and melodic fancy is fascinating to hear, from the first pieces composed in the late 1870s up to the last from 1921, shortly before Fauré's death.

Solidifying the qualifications of this double-CD set as the best to own is the addition of a lovely rendition of Fauré's Dolly Suite, with Hamelin's wife, Cathy Fuller, on the primo part. Fuller is a trained pianist who now works as a broadcaster, and she makes a lovely impression on the upper part, which Fauré intentionally made simpler, for the dedicatee, Regina-Hélène (nicknamed Dolly), the young daughter of his lover, Emma Bardac. (Emma eventually became Debussy's wife.) A perceptive booklet essay by Jessica Duchen, erstwhile blogger and author of an authoritative biography of Fauré (Phaidon Press, 2000), rounds out this most alluring new release.


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Briefly Noted: MAH takes on CPE

C.P.E. Bach, Sonatas and Rondos, Marc-André Hamelin (released on January 7, 2022) Hyperion CDA68368 | 141'01"

The keyboard music of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach can be a hard sell, often rendered either too understated or too flashy. It is music that tends to work best on instruments more like what the composer heard when he played it. Marc-André Hamelin has done something quite difficult, recording over two hours of selected pieces, mostly sonatas and rondos, on a Steinway last January and doing so with consummate style. Hamelin's impeccable virtuosity gives him the range of touch to capture the quicksilver emotional shifts in this music. For example, the varied movements of the Fantasia in C Major, with its comic back-and-forth of buffo repeated-note gestures, never descend into glibness. Hamelin approaches the more sentimental slow movements with equally earnest sincerity, which is also an advantage in the way he plays Liszt. It works so well because he wears his heart on his sleeve.

The best tracks on these two stellar discs are the curiosities, like the Sonata in E Minor, which is actually a five-movement suite of dances based on and quite reminiscent of his father's prelude-less French Suites. Another highlight is the Abschied von meinem Silbermannische Klaviere, in einem Rondo, a musical leave-taking of his beloved Silbermann clavichord, bequeathed to his pupil Ewald von Grotthuss in 1781. In one sign of how recently appreciation for this Bach son's music has come, this piece was not widely known until it was finally published in the 1980s. It explores the expressive possibilities of this gentle instrument, the contrasts of loud and soft, the pointed accents, even the ornamental vibrato effect possible on it, which Hamelin can only approximate.

Hamelin mines a number of odd character pieces for their beguiling quirks, vivid portraits of people who mostly cannot be identified. At first one wonders if the C Major Arioso with nine variations was worth including, but it heats up wonderfully around the charming fourth variation, set in the parallel minor. Hamelin delights in the circus-like tricks of the subsequent variations, too. Finally, added like encores are two miscellanea likely familiar to all denizens of after-school piano lessons: the rollicking Solfeggio in C Minor and the perky March in G Major (a piece of juvenilia, once wrongly attributed to the elder Bach, included in the Anna Magdalena Notebook).

'Fearsome songs of ancient Chaos': Hamelin in College Park

N. Medtner, Complete Piano Sonatas / Forgotten Melodies, M.-A. Hamelin (Hyperion, 1998) Debussy, Images / Préludes (Book 2), M.-A. Hamelin (Hyperion, 2014) R. Rimm, The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and the Eight (Amadeus Press, 2003)

A recital by Marc-André Hamelin may leave you breathless. The technical achievement, to be sure, will be awe-inspiring, but few other pianists can so easily convince a listener of the merits of music they likely do not know well, if at all. Washington has been blessed with a large number of recitals from Hamelin in the last few years, the latest of which was at the Clarice Smith Center on Sunday afternoon, to kick off the 50th anniversary celebrations for the International Piano Archives at the University of Maryland. In a post-intermission chat with IPAM's curator, Donald Manildi, Hamelin reminisced about his father's contact with the Archives in its first decade, as well as his own research association with the institution over the years.

The first half of this excellent recital was focused on Russian obscurities, beginning with two of Samuil Feinberg's short piano sonatas from the World War I years. Feinberg was one of the eight composer-pianists covered in Robert Rimm's book on the subject, a tradition in which Rimm included Hamelin, who plays his own inimitable pieces from time to time. Three of those composers (Rachmaninov, Medtner, and Scriabin), Feinberg once said (as quoted by Rimm), "were wonderful composers who came to their pianism through their own composition." One senses the same mechanism at work in Feinberg's music -- and in Hamelin as well -- in the meandering, longing melody of the second sonata (A minor, op. 2) buried almost beyond recognition in tangles of figuration, for example, or the extravagant harmonic vagaries of the first sonata (A major, op. 1). Hamelin voiced the melody of the second sonata with great care, making a right-hand raindrop-like motif shower over it.

These shorter works were paired with the mammoth second sonata of Nikolai Medtner (E minor, op. 25), a piece Hamelin also played at his Kennedy Center recital in 2013. Subtitled "Night Wind" after the poem of that title by Fyodor Tyutchev, it is a work of fearsome pianistic challenges, realized tempestuously in often thunderous cacophony by Hamelin, but it seduces because of the driven sense of melody and form. The piece never wanders, as Feinberg seems to do at times, at least not in Hamelin's hands.

Hamelin also played Book 1 of Debussy's Images again, and the interpretation was better than how I remembered it in his 2013 recital at Shriver Hall. Here the second movement (Hommage à Rameau) had much more rubato than I recalled and yet a greater delicacy, while the first movement (Reflets dans l'eau) still startled with its aquatic transparency, and the third (Mouvement) had an ultra-fast but still finely etched quality.

Other Reviews: Patrick Rucker, A performance to restore the virtue of ‘virtuoso’ (Washington Post, October 6)

Sheer virtuoso display came out in the last piece, Liszt's Venezia e Napoli, from the Italian year of Années de pèlerinage. Hamelin took the barcarolle of the first movement (Gondoliera) at a leisurely tempo, tickling the ear with the many lacy figurations and trills of the right hand. Somehow the insistent tremolos of the second movement, at times almost like a furiously strummed mandolin accompanying the song -- an aria from Rossini's Otello -- managed not to sound hokey, and the Tarantella of the third movement provided the necessary ignition to fuel a bacchanal of encores. (Another outrageous Liszt concert paraphrase, Réminiscences de Norma, served the same purpose in Hamelin's 2011 recital at Strathmore.)

In response to enthusiastic ovations, Hamelin generously offered four encores, beginning with the first of Earl Wild's Seven Virtuoso Études on Popular Songs, based on George Gershwin's song Liza (All the Clouds'll Roll Away). This was followed by Liszt's arrangement of Chopin's song My Joys, Godowsky's mind-blowing transcription of Chopin's Revolutionary Etude for the left hand alone (!), and The Punch and Judy Show, a madcap miniature by Eugène Goossens (embedded below).

The next recital in the series honoring IPAM will feature Orion Weiss (December 3), at the Clarice Smith Center in College Park.

Marc-André Hamelin

N. Medtner, Complete Piano Sonatas / Forgotten Melodies, M.-A. Hamelin (Hyperion, 1998)

Music is an ephemeral and mysterious thing, some lines and circles laid out, inert on the page. You know exactly how the thing goes, in theory, because you push the keys in the right order and out comes Schubert's last piano sonata, D. 960. Yet, you do not really know, because the damn thing, elusive in its melancholy brilliance, sounds so different in different hands: Konstantin Soukhovetski (2012), Menahem Pressler (2011), Radu Lupu (2009), Alfred Brendel (2008), Andreas Haefliger (2007), Leon Fleisher (2006). Even with all those earlier performances, and more besides, the rendition by Marc-André Hamelin, heard at his latest Washington Performing Arts Society recital on Monday night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, was full of surprises. The change of the Schubert selection to the B-flat major sonata, a monument in the history of keyboard music, came late in the game, but no one was complaining. In an insert added to the program, Hamelin noted joyfully that he would be content if this piece were on every program he played for the rest of his life. That love of this music, causing Hamelin to marvel at "how mysteriously Schubert is able to achieve such spiritual heights through the very simplest of means," came through in how he played it, reverently, with a caressing touch, but also with his signature controlled mastery of touch. The control, though evident upon reflection on the craftmanship of sound, did not make the performance cautious or fussy, though -- it brought it to life.

Other Articles: Anne Midgette, At Kennedy Center, Marc-Andre Hamelin doesn’t seem to find anything difficult (Washington Post, November 27) Michael Roddy, Circus Galop: Canadian Pianist Marc-André Hamelin on Performing, Composing and 'Synethesia' (Reuters, November 14) Niels Swinkels, Marc-André Hamelin and the Mystery of Human Creativity (San Francisco Classical Voice, November 11) Ivan Hewett, Marc-André Hamelin, Wigmore Hall, review (The Telegraph, November 5) Andrew Clements, Busoni: Late Piano Music – review (The Guardian, October 30) Charles T. Downey, Hamelin @ Shriver Hall (Ionarts, January 29) 113. Why do you howl, night wind? Why do you complain insanely? Your voice is strange. What does it mean? First muffled, pitiful, then loud? My heart understands your tongue, your tale of madness it can't, and at times you uproot and plow up frenzied noises in your words! .......... Don't sing these songs, these fearsome songs of ancient Chaos, kindred Chaos! How avidly the inner soul of night hears the beloved tale! It wants to burst from the breast, it wants to merge with the boundless. Oh, do not wake the sleeping storms - Chaos writhes beneath them! -- Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-1873)

The first movement's trajectory was, in a sense, laid out in the first eight bars, with Hamelin gently unsettling the tonality with whispered emphasis on the dissonance in the left hand -- the raised fourth scale degree on the downbeat of measure two and the menacing trill on the flat sixth, both half-steps on either side of the dominant. So much of the exposition is marked pianissimo, and Hamelin did exactly that, really crashing down at the little connective material that leads back to the repeat, which made the sudden turn toward C# minor at the development stand out in contrast. The second movement was the most shadowy I have ever heard it, the right hand's melody completely free of the gently crossing left hand, while the third movement seemed utterly unconcerned with the sadness around it, a flighty dance that seemed quite fast, the trio approaching the edginess of tango with its misplaced accents. The fourth movement, whose main theme remains stubbornly in G minor, really until the Presto coda takes us back to the relative major, was driven by its knell-like opening tone, placed just so each time.

An encore seemed unlikely after the Schubert, although Hamelin told an interviewer that he always has "several pieces" prepared and will play them depending on the audience's reaction ("I will play as many as they want, basically" -- perhaps if the audience had insisted more). In retrospect, it was difficult to expect other music to have preceded D. 960 as well, but here was where Hamelin's love of obscure music made the difference. (He told the same interviewer that the piece he has never performed but would most like to is Pierre Boulez's second sonata, which he ranks with D. 960 and Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.) In John Field's short and sweet Andante inédit (E-flat major, H. 64), Hamelin's light touch reminded me of his charming way with the music of Haydn. It was a good balance for the monster that loomed after it, Nikolai Medtner's tempestuous E minor sonata (op. 25, no. 2), known as "Night Wind" because it was inspired by a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev (see the translation in the sidebar). Medtner dedicated the piece to Rachmaninoff, with whose music it has a lot in common, but where Rachmaninoff's tendency toward sentimentality often grates on my nerves, Medtner drowns the ear in contrapuntal complexity, which Hamelin patiently pulled apart into separate strands. Motifs of clanging bells, howling winds, and lost songs are buried in tangles of chromatic vagaries, hand crossings, and impossible technical challenges, as the piece reels drunkenly from poetic reverie to frenzied rapture. WPAS, which had trouble filling the larger hall at Strathmore for Hamelin's last recital, in 2011, learned its lesson, and there were still, to my amazement, empty seats in the much smaller Terrace Theater.

Another great Schubert piece, the Wanderer Fantasy, is the focus of Rob Kapilow's next What Makes It Great? lecture series (December 15, 6 pm), presented by WPAS at the National Museum of Natural History. Following the lecture, pianist Yuliya Gorenman will perform the work in its entirety.

Briefly Noted: Hamelin's Haydn

Haydn, Keyboard Concertos 3/4/11, M.-A. Hamelin, Les Violons du Roy, B. Labadie (released on April 9, 2013) Hyperion CDA67925 | 61'44" Haydn, Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 3, M.-A. Hamelin (2012)

Marc-André Hamelin plays Haydn on a Steinway, unapologetically and beautifully. We have admired the Canadian pianist's immaculate, sleek, ornately decorated Haydn sonatas in concert, at fine recitals in 2011 and 2009, and his series of recordings of the sonatas is in the same category and, in 2-CD installments at a single-disc price, not expensive. This spring Hamelin released a disc of Haydn keyboard concertos, choosing to go back to his native Quebec to collaborate with Les Violons du Roy and conductor Bernard Labadie. Most days I would opt for more HIP-oriented performances, like Andreas Staier on fortepiano with the Freiburger Barockorchester (Harmonia Mundi, 2005) or Ton Koopman on harpsichord with Musica Antiqua Amsterdam (Philips, 1996), but in many ways Hamelin's performance captures many of the same sparkling, light qualities.

The three concertos combined here, each lasting around twenty minutes, are the only ones that can actually be attributed to Haydn with any certainty. The history of problems authenticating the many such pieces supposedly by Haydn is laid out in an informative booklet essay by scholar Richard Wigmore, the author of The Faber Pocket Guide to Haydn, published during the Haydn anniversary year in 2009. Publishers in the 18th and 19th century often took advantage of the fame of Haydn's name to give music a better chance at popularity, so often in fact that even contemporaries doubted the provenance of new Haydn pieces. The D major concerto (Hob. XVIII:11), destined for either harpsichord or fortepiano, is certainly the best known of the three, which Hamelin performs with the somewhat fancifully Romantic cadenzas of Wanda Landowska (some of the harmonies, especially in the one for the slow movement, sound like Poulenc at times). In the best virtuoso tradition, Hamelin plays his own cadenzas for the two earlier concertos, in F major (Hob. XVIII:3) and G major (Hob. XVIII:4), and given the scope of his own compositions, they are (not surprisingly) flashy, witty, and overall delightful. Labadie and his ensemble, just strings in the earlier concertos and with fine oboes and horns in the D major, provide an agile and sensitive backdrop.

Hamelin @ Shriver Hall

Haydn, Piano Sonatas, Vol. 3, M.-A. Hamelin (2012) Liszt, Piano Sonata (inter alia), M.-A. Hamelin (2011)

Marc-André Hamelin is a showman, but far from an empty-headed one. The program he played on Sunday evening, for his debut at Baltimore's Shriver Hall, combined the Canadian-born pianist's cardinal virtues: ear-tickling virtuosity, an exploratory curiosity for unlikely repertory, and an unexpected approach to the familiar.

In the first category was the opening work, Bach's Great G Minor Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 542, in the expansive transcription by Tivadar Szántó. Conceived by Bach for the organ, it is a piece beloved of many composers and performers -- Liszt, among others, arranged it for piano -- and one had the sense of Hamelin meditating on one of music's ancient scriptures. With a liberal use of the sustaining pedal, applied in all sorts of interesting ways, Hamelin gave the prelude a vast scope, both crushing in volume on fully voiced chords and glowing in a haze of sound at other points. The fugue had both crystalline clarity and massive textures in turn, astounding in fortitude of tone. Put Hamelin's own set of variations on a theme of Paganini -- the theme of Paganini, the one subjected to outrageous variations in his 24th Caprice -- in the same category. Part circus march, part homage to various composers -- snippets of Beethoven, Mozart, and tribute to Rachmaninoff, Chopin, and Stravinsky -- the piece is a hoot and Hamelin played it fearlessly.

For our pianistic edification, there was Ferrucio Busoni's rarely played Piano Sonatina No. 2, an enigmatic piece that is radically unlike what is implied by the unassuming word "sonatina." Hamelin sought to unravel every eccentric tangle of the piece, reveling in its contrapuntal complexities -- a connection to the Bach that had preceded it -- and its harmonic extravagance. To draw a connection between Busoni and the Debussy that followed it, he used the work's odd conclusion to hold the audience in silence, beginning the first book of Images after a short pause. Through his scrupulous control of hand weight, Hamelin gave these three pieces an extraordinary transparency, creating the sense of imperceptible mists in Reflets dans l'eau and a blurred, almost atomic instability in Mouvement, of motion captured in a series of frozen stills. Only the middle movement, Hommage à Rameau, disappointed slightly -- sultry, but a little slow and dull, not catching the Baroque delight in rhythm. The set was capped off by a virtuostic, aquatically shimmering reading of L'Isle joyeuse.

Other Reviews: Tim Smith, Pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin gives compelling recital at Shriver Hall (Baltimore Sun, January 28) ---, Marc-Andre Hamelin to make Shriver Hall recital debut (Baltimore Sun, January 26) Jens F. Laurson, Ionarts-at-Large: Marc-André Hamelin at the Herkulessaal (Ionarts, December 16, 2012)

Not many pianists really make me want to hear the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff, but Hamelin is one of them. He gave a pearl-like finish to two of the op. 32 preludes: a wistful, rubato-stretched no. 5 (G major) and an aphoristic no. 12 (G♯ minor), marked by a restlessly fluttering right hand. The program concluded with the composer's second piano sonata, wisely played in the revised 1931 version -- trusting the composer's later (perhaps too late) impulses toward self-editing. Hamelin raged through the fast parts of the first movement with technical aplomb but left room for poetry, giving the second movement a voluminous sweep without letting it become too sugary. The third movement rocketed with vitality. Hopes for a Haydn sonata encore -- from Hamelin's growing set devoted to that Ionarts favorite composer -- were almost met, with a guileless, crisp reading of the first movement of Mozart's C major piano sonata, K. 545. This famous little piece, which Mozart entered into his catalog of compositions with the words "Eine kleine klavier Sonate für anfänger" (A little keyboard sonata for beginners), was a last wink of the eye and nudge of the elbow from Hamelin the showman.

We will be back at Shriver Hall next month for the recital by mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and pianist Yefim Bronfman (February 17, 5:30 pm).

Ionarts-at-Large: Marc-André Hamelin at the Herkulessaal

Ferrucio Busoni

Ten years ago, no one would ha ve wanted to hear Marc-André Hamelin in Debussy, and rightly so. Now he’s among the best in that sort of repertoire. The transformation of Hamelin from piano-pyrotechnician to musician with great tonal control and a splendid legato is remarkable. He proved that with ease and a gorgeous tone from his Fazioli piano in a recital at Munich’s half-filled Herkulessaal on December 12.

M-A.Hamelin on ionarts: Blame Canada!, National Gallery of Art (18.1.04) Marc-André Hamelin in New York, Mannes College of Music (4.8.05) Who for Whom? Marc-André Hamelin Pinch-Hits, Strathmore (10.4.09) Hamelin @ Strathmore, Strathmore Hall (2.5.11) Takács and Hamelin, Library of Congress (14.11.12) Dip Your Ears, No. 19, Nikolai Kapustin (25.11.04)

Debussy’s Images (Book 1) followed seamlessly after Busoni’s wonderfully radical Sonatina Seconda, Hamelin ensuring the applause-less transition—and therefore the hint at harmonic similarities—with the good old curled-at-the-piano-bench technique. If you didn’t know Busoni’s ‘Sonata on Themes from Doktor Faust’ was on the program, the 1912 work could be mistaken for some off-the-wall Debussy; at least for a few bars of airy and tonally adventurous harmonies. But eventually Busoni’s unique blend of German spunk (elsewhere an oxymoron) breaks out of the Germanic-Italian composer and throws into question anyone else’s authorship with passages that are wild, difficult, more difficult-sounding still… then deceptively calm and simple again. The work, underappreciated though it is, can stand proudly next to the exactly contemporaneous Concord Sonata (Ives) and Scriabin’s Seventh Sonata.

The Debussy meanwhile was full of shades and softly subtle tones (Reflets dans l'eau), regal (Hommage à Rameau), and of a seamless rhythmic back-and-forth (Mouvement). L'Isle joyeuse was similarly sumptuous.

Hamelin still pulls out the crazy virtuoso stuff, tough, as he did after intermission with his own Paganini Variations, a marvelously ridiculous work and just the thing for those who love him for Godowski-Chopin Étude outbreaks and Alkan acrobatics. It’s a sack full of pianistic difficulty, spiced with musical references subtle and unsubtle, witty and crude, to Chopin and Rachmaninoff and Beethoven and Liszt and probably many others, which was lapped up with giggles of disbelief and impromptu laughter whenever the audience recognized the original behind the quote.

You’d think the piano would be out of notes after that tour de force, but he still had enough left to play two luscious Rachmaninoff Préludes (op.32/5 and 12) and then the Second Sonata (1931 version). A seeing-eye dog in the audience let out a long, content and sleepy grunt with the onset of the soft and calming second movement, after the stormy first—a sentiment I shared as I indulged in the brawn and sweep, the round tone—but never any smudges—of the remainder of the work. An Andante (inedit, H64) from the father of the Nocturne, John Field, followed as a mellow encore with hints of Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin, before Hamelin threw the crowd another virtuoso bone with a Godowski-Chopin Étude. It went to show that the increased depth of his playing has not come at the expense of his wizardry. Hamelin had opened the recital with a meaty Theodor Szántó transcription of Bach's G minor Fantasia & Fugue (BWV 542)... a gravely grandiose opening full of the rhythmic calm and steady propulsion that makes for that uniquely Bachian beauty that no soloist's slips or arranging could endanger.

Washington-area readers should know that Marc-André Hamelin will play essentially the same program in his recital at Shriver Hall in Baltimore next month (January 27, 5:30 pm). [-- Ed.]

Takács and Hamelin

R. Schumann, String Quartet (op. 41/3) / Piano Quintet, Takács Quartet, M.-A. Hamelin (2009) Schubert, String Quartets 13/14, Takács Quartet (2006)

Take the Takács Quartet, one of our favorite string quartets, and Marc-André Hamelin, one of our favorite pianists, and put them together on one free concert at the Library of Congress, and you have our full attention. The concert by that combination on Tuesday night was an easy choice for our top picks of this month, and nothing could have kept us from hearing it. Except maybe the long security lines at the entrance to the Jefferson Building, which nearly did.

The program played to all of this venerable quartet's strengths, beginning with the simmering, moody themes of Schubert's A minor quartet (D. 804), named for Schubert's incidental music for the play Rosamunde, a theme from which appears in the quartet's second movement. In the first three movements, this performance rose little above a hush, with the pure, sweet tone of first violinist Edward Dusinberre leading the blossoming of minor into major and back. The second movement had the feel of a wordless melody hummed to oneself while on a stroll, a glowing, rosy set of variations, but the third movement stood out for its folk-inflected introduction to a delicate dance, forlorn and lonely even in its trio set in major. The fourth movement, the only moment of sunny exuberance, had all of its staccato chords in unity, with little Haydnesque jokes at the theme's return.

Britten's three string quartets, masterful 20th-century examples of the genre that make one wish he had composed more of them, are not yet in the Takács's discography. Dusinberre gave an insightful introduction to the first quartet (D major, op. 25). Composed in 1940, when Britten was living in the United States, the work was commissioned by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, for whom the Library's acoustically gorgeous auditorium is named. Its opening is one of the stranger moments in the repertoire, with the three higher instruments hanging in the clouds on long, high notes over distracted pizzicati in the cello. The first movement's animated fast section rumbled away, turning heavenward again to dissolve into those numinous, floating structures of the opening. The second movement, a heavy-footed dance, was interrupted by garrulous growls from the four instruments in grouchy conversation. The third movement, described by Dusinberre as one of Britten's evocations of the seascape of his home country in East Anglia, was marked by the group's impeccable intonation and balance, caressing the dissonances that dissolve into consonance. The fourth movement was an athletic romp, with impish upward flourishes that powered the piece to an ecstatic ending. When the group records the Britten quartets, it should be memorable.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Classical music review: The Takacs Quartet (Washington Post, November 15)

The evening reached its apogee with Shostakovich's piano quintet (op. 57), one of the most eloquent pieces written for that combination of instruments. It dates from the same year as Britten's first quartet, 1940, and rumbles with many of the same tensions but is more tragic in character where Britten was elegiac. Hamelin brought to the keyboard part both reticence, with the piano often trying to fit into the texture in minimal ways (trying to sneak in like a string instrument in the mournful fugue of the second movement), and overwhelming power, biting in tone as the engine that drives the cynical dance of the scherzo. Shostakovich wrote the piano part for himself (he claimed in a letter that it was easy), to play with the Beethoven Quartet, who requested the piece, and it met with delirious critical acclaim in the Soviet Union. The fourth-movement lament was led by the soulful first violin -- the final part of Dusinberre's first-rate performance -- joined in perfect tandem by Geraldine Walther's viola. Seeming to put on a false happy face, the music takes an odd turn in the neoclassical intermezzo, aping a zippy Baroque serenade at times, followed by a quasi-Mozartean sonata-form conclusion. Although the piece won Shostakovich a Stalin Prize, it was not without its detractors, as documented by biographer Laurel Fay. A functionary named Moisey Grinberg penned a critique that labeled the work "a composition of profoundly Western orientation" and "music that does not connect with the life of the people." Fortunately for Shostakovich, Grinberg's was a minority opinion. Sofia Moshevich relates Shostakovich's remarks after the premiere, as recalled by writer Marietta Shagynian: "I have been wandering the streets of Moscow, my soul filled with bliss."

The next chamber music concert at the Library of Congress will feature the Apollon Musagète Quartet this Friday (November 16, 8 pm), playing music by Haydn, Szymanowski, Suk, and Mendelssohn.

Hamelin @ Strathmore

Haydn, Piano Sonatas Schumann, Carnaval (inter alia) Hamelin, Etudes

Marc-André Hamelin sneaked onto the Washington Performing Arts Society's Hayes Piano Series through the back door last year, when he stepped in at the last minute to replace an ailing Krystian Zimerman. Although that luxury substitution should have been enough to start building a broader audience in Washington for Hamelin -- a daredevil virtuoso who also has an acute musical intelligence -- the number of empty seats at Strathmore on Friday night seemed to indicate it has not happened yet. Hamelin was back, this time with his own recital for WPAS, and although the program was a bit of a mish-mash with one real dud at the end, with Hamelin at the keyboard one is sure to have one's ears and brain tickled.

Just like last year, he opened with a polished pearl of a Haydn sonata, this time in E minor (Hob. XVI:34). The outer movements -- Presto and Molto vivace, respectively -- were perfectly suited to the delicate, feathery, spritely approach favored by Hamelin, weightless even at very fast tempi. The endless decoration, especially in the last movement, purled from his hands without a hint of fussiness or excess theatricality. His exquisite touch on the keys, weighting and voicing each note just so, made the second movement, with its operatic flights of fancy in the right hand, particularly effective. The same strengths were on display in the reprise of the same Fauré nocturne he played last year, op. 63/6, wisps of melody in a misty, wandering setting of perfumed sighs that did not descend into the merely saccharine.

The two larger works on the program were in celebration of composers with recent or current anniversaries being observed. Hamelin played many of the movements of Schumann's Carnaval, op. 9, in a refreshingly straightforward way, stripping most of the sentimentality from the Chopin movement, for example -- in a way recalling the forthright virtuosity of Hamelin's recent Chopin disc. The Préambule was noisy and raucous, with a booming left hand and plenty of carnivalesque chaos. Pierrot was sweet and a little awkward, with its obsessive repetition of the same motif (E-flat, C, B-flat), and Harlequin playful in the big leaping dotted rhythms. The wandering right hand in the Eusebius movement floated over beautiful voicings in the left hand, and the contrasting Florestan was irascible and fizzy. Fast movements like Papillons, Pantalon et Colombine, and Reconnaissance, with its percolating repeated notes, floated and whirled at a breathtaking pace. The only disappointment, admittedly very mild, was that Hamelin did not play the Sphinxes movement in any form: no big surprise there, as most pianists simply omit this piece, which is only a series of long notes spelling out some of the letter-coded melodies Schumann used. Still, the possibility of what Hamelin might do with this unnumbered non-movement was tantalizing.

Other Reviews: Anne Midgette, Marc-Andre Hamelin at Strathmore (Washington Post, May 2) Michael Church, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Queen Elizabeth Hall (The Guardian, April 19) Ivan Hewett, Marc-André Hamelin, Queen Elizabeth Hall (The Telegraph, April 18) Erica Jeal, Marc-André Hamelin (The Guardian, April 18)

In honor of the Liszt anniversary, Hamelin ended this recital with Réminiscences de Norma. One of those trashy concert paraphrases, it is the sort of thing that makes one's eyes roll just to see it on a program. Nevertheless, one had hopes that Hamelin might be able to redeem the work, which shows a sincere admiration for Bellini's opera while drowning its melodies in endless scales and octaves. My hopes were dashed, but there was plenty in Hamelin's astounding technique to admire. Hamelin has done much to increase awareness of the extended-serialist works of German-born composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972), and he made a more persuasive case for his Passacaglia from Four Studies on Basic Rows. The work had just as many challenges as the Liszt selection, and much more to admire formally. Two encores were no less surprising, beginning with Hamelin's own seventh etude, an arrangement of a Tchaikovsky lullaby: listening to it with one's eyes closed would lead you to admire the individuality of the various voices, an assessment only enhanced when you opened your eyes and saw that he played it with only his left hand. (See and hear for yourself in the video embedded below.) The second encore was the same Busoni elegy played by Jenny Lin the night before.

Hamelin Makes Chopin His Own

Chopin, Piano Sonatas 2/3 (inter alia), M.-A. Hamelin (released on January 13, 2009) Hyperion CDA67706 Online scores: Chopin's First Editions Online

Chopin has figured in the recital programs and even recordings of Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin, but this is the first time that he has devoted an entire disc to the Polish composer and pianist's pianist. Since Hamelin has not played any Chopin on his area recitals, in 2004 and an unscheduled substitution for Krystian Zimerman this past April, I had not given his interpretation of Chopin much thought until this recent release in Hamelin's fine series of recordings for Hyperion crossed my desk. Not only is Hamelin's playing extremely virtuosic, but here as noted of his recording of the Ives Concord Sonata, he is willing to push that extraordinary technique to the breaking point in the interest of a daring, dramatic interpretation. So while there is plenty of extraordinary Chopin on disc, this is the sort of Chopin that, far from wilting in a wan, tubercular introspection, grabs you by the collar and shouts to the rooftops.

In fact, Hamelin has more or less jumped near the top of the list of my favorite living Chopin players, surpassing Louis Lortie, Hélène Grimaud, Grigory Sokolov, Nelson Freire, and Ingrid Fliter to attain the heights of Yundi Li and even Maurizio Pollini, if not quite yet Evgeny Kissin. As a point of reference, Grimaud's playing of Chopin's second sonata paled in my ears next to the memory, still vivid, of Pollini's rendering of the Marche funèbre, voiced to imitate the sound of a military band, of the sort that accompanied funeral processions in Paris. The third sonata has an example of Hamelin's brinkmanship in the unhinged second movement, a scherzo in which he takes the meaning of the Molto vivace tempo marking literally, playing at the edge of manic disintegration. There are moments of softly shaded colors, too, but for the greatest variation in search of the broadest range of moods and contrasts, Alexandre Tharaud is my current favorite.

76'40"

Who for Whom? Marc-André Hamelin Pinch-Hits

Marc-André Hamelin: In a State of Jazz (Antheil, Gulda, Kapustin, Weissenberg) Haydn, Piano Sonatas Schumann, Fantasy in C (inter alia)

No one was very happy about the cancellation that affected the recital on Wednesday night at Strathmore -- not Krystian Zimerman whose sinus infection caused him to cancel, or Washington Performing Arts Society who had to scramble to find a replacement, or the audience, many of whom apparently received the news in advance and decided to stay home. Perhaps it was only your reviewer, who regretted another chance to hear Zimerman, to be sure, but who equally relished the chance to hear Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin. After all, Hamelin has not played in Washington since a 2004 recital at the National Gallery of Art, although Jens reviewed him in 2005 in New York. Fortunately, for listeners around the world Hamelin has created an extensive series of recordings, focusing especially on modern composers, some more known (Ives, Godowsky) and others less so (Alkan). As far as substitutions go, it was as near a luxury replacement as one could reasonably hope.

Hamelin's calling card is music of fiendish technical challenges, which was not really a part of this program, presumably because of the lack of preparation time. Instead, this was a game of subtlety and restraint, beginning with a Haydn sonata (no. 32, B minor, Hob. XVI:32) most noteworthy for its delicate, understated touch, contoured lines, and clear fingerwork. Those who have accused Hamelin's Haydn set of being intemperate would have approved of the gentleness of this performance, with the Steinway in the first movement scaled down to pianoforte sound, just with booming fortes. The second movement was lightly pedaled, with a clean, active minor section, and the contrapuntal last movement, with its obsessive, repeated-note subject was brisk, but not manic. The same feeling of careful temperance came through in the Fauré pairing that opened the second half, especially in the fleeting, transparent sound of the Nocturne No. 6 (op. 63). The Barcarolle No. 3 (op. 42) was vivified by wild roulades, often rolling like waves around a skilfully voiced inner melody.

Schumann's Fantasie in C Major (op. 17) is fresh in my ears from Maurizio Pollini's recital in October, and it was originally on Yaron Kohlberg's program last weekend, replaced by the Davidsbündlertänze. Hamelin, like Pollini, emphasized the Eusebius parts of the work, showing the introverted, moony side of the composer's personality (the end of the first movement was so lost in musing that it almost seemed to be whispered inside the listener's head), with a free, plastic sense of rubato and, once again, crystal-clear voicings, with evanescent non-melodic lines meaning that the melody could be quite clear without being hammered. Where Pollini's second movement showed the martial insistence on dotted rhythms as a sort of empty-headed rigor, Hamelin's performance had a wide-open sense of bombast without being so relentless, with even the loudest sections voiced with care.

Other Reviews: Philip Kennicott, Boo Who? Hamelin Ably Fills In At WPAS (Washington Post, April 10)

The closing set of Debussy preludes, all from the second book, showcased Hamelin's gifts as a colorist, with shimmering pastel trills, so soft, in «Les Fées sont d'exquises danseuses»; a suave, wind-blown Bruyères; and a lampooned Général Lavine - eccentric, quixotic but not vulgar. After an eerie La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune, full of hushed magic, Hamelin made child's play of the crossed-hand moto perpetuo toccata of Les tierces alternées and highlighted a booming section in the middle of a lacy but bright Feux d'artifices. Hamelin indulged his interest in jazz in two encores, Alexis Weissenberg's arrangement of the Charles Trenet song En Avril à Paris (recorded on Hamelin's recent disc of jazz arrangements) and Hamelin's own jazzy, Debussy-inflected nocturne from 2007. If nothing else, this excellent recital allows Marc-André Hamelin to sneak into the WPAS series by the back door, since in his apologetic introduction WPAS president Neale Perl acknowledged that they are possibly the last concert organizer in the United States to feature a recital by Hamelin. Because some of the senior pianists regularly featured by WPAS, like Murray Perahia, Richard Goode, or Maurizio Pollini, will not be performing forever, we can hope that Hamelin will come back to Washington more frequently in the future.

The last major piano recital sponsored by WPAS this season will feature Louis Lortie, playing his rendition of the complete Chopin Études (May 2, 4 pm), in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall.

Ives, Concord Sonata

C. Ives, Concord Sonata, op. 19/Barber, Piano Sonata, op. 26, Marc-André Hamelin (with Jaime Martin, flute), released September 14, 2004

C. Ives, Concord Sonata, op. 19, and Songs, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Susan Graham, Tabea Zimmermann, Emmanuel Pahud, released May 11, 2004

Several people have released recordings of the second piano sonata by Charles Ives, which he subtitled "Concord, Mass., 1840-60" (1904-15, published in 1920). However, I think that the best recordings of this transcendent work that one could hope to own were both released last year. We should always be lucky enough to choose between performances by Marc-André Hamelin and Pierre-Laurent Aimard, both of whom have more than enough intelligence and technique to give excellent accounts of this strange and often difficult piece. Unfortunately, we are not very good about choosing at Ionarts. If you have to choose, here are some thoughts.

The idea of a sonic landscape of a specific place and time -- Concord, Massachusetts, from 1840 to 1860 -- is a typically Ivesian gesture. The renegade American composer was Proustian, in the sense that his music, heavily laden with self-references and quotations or mutations of other music from classical to popular, is often about remembering. In the case of the Concord sonata, it is not only a time and place that Ives evokes, but the writings of great Transcendentalist authors who lived there: in the order of the movements, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Alcotts (Amos Bronson Alcott and his daughter, Louisa May), and Henry David Thoreau. Ives grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, when the writings of these Concord authors were still quite recent. At one point this typically New England sensibility in some way was a generally American one, but I'm not so sure that that is true anymore.

Concord Sonata	Emerson	Hawthorne	The Alcotts	Thoreau	Total
Hamelin	15'34"	10'13"	5'13"	11'36"	42'54"
Aimard	17'09"	12'29"	6'22"	12'07"	48'07"

Also on Ionarts: Charles T. Downey, Thomas Meglioranza at the Phillips (Ives songs) (December 13, 2005) Frank Pesci, Jr., A Big Plate of Americana for My Birthday (Three Places in New England, Boston Symphony) (October 8, 2005) Jens F. Laurson, Marc-André Hamelin in New York (August 4, 2005) Charles T. Downey, Alex Ross on Ives and the Pulitzer (June 7, 2004) Charles T. Downey, Ives (May 21, 2004) Jens F. Laurson, Do Something Like Men! (Ives, second string quartet, Colorado Quartet) (May 20, 2004) Jens F. Laurson, Stars and Strings (Ives, first string quartet, Leipzig Quartet) (April 18, 2004) Jens F. Laurson, Marc-André Hamelin at the National Gallery of Art (January 18, 2004)

The differences between the two recordings are fairly obvious from the disc timings. Each movement in Hamelin's recording is shorter than Aimard's, totalling up to about five minutes less over all four movements. Hamelin's tempi are almost all brisker, sometimes maniacally so, and the result is an audibly gutsier, if less polished, performance. The end of the second movement ("Hawthorne") is some of the wildest, unbridled playing I have ever heard, almost lunatic. In the notes for the published score, Ives writes (reminding me at least of some of the crazier marks left by Satie):

For the most part, this movement is supposed to be played as fast as possible and not too literally. Marks of tempo, expression, etc. are used as little as possible. If the score itself, the preface or an interest in Hawthorne suggest nothing, marks may only make things worse. It is not intended that the relation 2:1 between the 32nd and 16th notes here be held to always literally. The use of the sustaining pedal is almost constantly required.

If Americans have read anything by Hawthorne, it would likely be his critique of Puritan social strictures, The Scarlet Letter. In Essays before a Sonata, a set of thoughts on the literature that inspired the work that was published with the score in 1920, Ives states clearly that Hawthorne's "basic theme [...] that has to do with the influence of sin upon the conscience" is "not attempted in our music." What Ives had in mind were the more Gothic adventure stories for which Hawthorne was also known. He lists Feathertop, The Celestial Railroad, The Seven Vagabonds, Circe's Palace, and a few others. In case you are not confused enough yet, he adds that it may be "something about the ghost of a man who never lived, or about something that never will happen, or something else that is not."

In the first movement ("Emerson"), Ives adds the following note for one motif: "This is but one of Emerson's sudden calls for a Transcendental Journey [...] almost as though the Mountains of the Universe were shouting as all of Humanity rises to behold the 'Massive Eternities' and the 'Spiritual Immensities'." Hamelin's rendition is reckless at times, more about the soul struggling to grasp "spiritual immensities" than anything concrete. His approach may not be intellectual because the intellect may have little place in Ives's conception of the Concord sonata. At the same time, much of the detail in the score -- snatched quotations, inner voices, dynamic shading -- is frankly impossible to realize at the tempi Hamelin chooses, even for Hamelin, and the man is capable of a whole lot.

For a performance that has all of those details in the score, you must have the Aimard recording. The tempi are still appropriate and impressively fast at times, if not precipitous. Furthermore, it is complete in that this piano sonata has optional parts for both flute (a longer and important solo at the end of the muted final "Thoreau" movement, played on both recordings, by Jaime Martin for Hamelin and by Emmanuel Pahud for Aimard) and viola (a tiny couple of measures in the first movement), and the latter is heard only on the Aimard disc, played by Tabea Zimmermann.

Although listed as "optional," in fact, the flute part is essential to the Concord sonata. The last movement, according to Ives's notes, "is supposed to be played in a lower dynamic ratio than usual; -- i.e., the "f" here is about the "mf" of the preceding movements." For the flute solo, Ives writes, "A flute may play throughout this page." He does give instructions for what the piano should do if there is no flute, but he adds that "Thoreau much prefers to hear the flute over Walden." The viola part -- marked "ad lib" and in off-kilter triplets is not essential, but there is no way for Hamelin to incorporate it into the piano part, making its absence tangible as the first movement winds down to its conclusion, where we hear, in Ives's words, "the overtones of the soul of humanity rising away almost inaudibly to the Ultimate Destiny."

The texture of Ives's score is at times extremely dense, requiring three staves, for example. Aimard's voicings are almost always better, which is largely what Hamelin sacrifices with his tempi. The "fate motif" (sol-sol-sol-me) of Beethoven's fifth symphony is an important theme, hammered out throughout the score in various guises, corresponding in Emerson's work, Ives wrote, to "the Soul of humanity knocking at the door of the Divine Mysteries." One of my favorite moments in the score is the massive tone clusters in the middle of the second movement ("Hawthorne"), which Ives instructs are to be played with "a strip of board 14 3/4" in length," placed over the necessary part of the keyboard. If you think this would always produce the same sound, Hamelin's and Aimard's techniques with the wood are actually quite different from one another.

One part of the Aimard recording that I do not understand is the hymn section in the Hawthorne movement, what Ives describes as a hymn heard over a distant hill just after a storm. In the longest statement of the hymn theme, a series of tonal chords, Ives writes, "Here the Hymn for a moment is slightly held up by a Friendly Ghost in the Church Yard." For whatever reason, Aimard adds dissonant notes, not indicated in the score or in any revision to my knowledge, after he strikes the chords notated by Ives. (These seem to be modeled on the "overtone echoes over Orchard House" that Ives did notate in the third movement, "The Alcotts.") It's true that Elliott Carter remembered Ives in later years adding dissonances to his earlier works, a practice that Aimard appears to be extending. Also in the second movement are the big quotations of Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean and another march that also appears in the second movement of Three Places in New England.

The other reason that you should choose Aimard over Hamelin, if you have to choose, is what else is on each disc. Hamelin pairs the Concord sonata with a muscular performance of Barber's Piano Sonata, which is a great piece, too. However, the rest of the Aimard recording consists of a set of Ives songs, with mezzo-soprano Susan Graham. These songs are a wonderful complement to the Concord sonata, illuminating it with parallel glimpses of Ives's musical imagination.

Marc-André Hamelin is originally from Montréal, although he now lives in Philadelphia. He did make an earlier recording of the Concord sonata (with a sonata by Maurice Wright, released on CD in 1992), which I haven't heard yet. His 2004 CD went largely unnoticed, as far as I can tell. As for the Aimard/Graham CD, Jeremy Eichler listed it on the 2004 Best CDs list from the New York Times, although few other critics noticed it. (Here is Andrew McGregor's review for the BBC.) Of course, it then won the Grammy Award, but it was really the songs that won, for Best Classical Vocal Performance. In his 2004 piece on Ives (Pandemonium: Charles Ives, The New Yorker, June 7, 2004), Alex Ross did include some remarks on Aimard's live performance of the Concord sonata at Zankel Hall that year.

Marc-André Hamelin in New York

Marc-André Hamelin, appearing at the Mannes College of Music as part of the International Keyboard Institute and Festival played Schubert's A major sonata, D664, out on its lightest, gentlest side. It was treatment that the work can not only withstand but one that, in the right hands, becomes it. (This in contrast to the Mozart that Ionarts thought too 'Dresden china-y' when we last heard him at the National Gallery.) Given Mr. Hamelin's famous technical faculties, I am convinced that his neurons don't even bother firing up certain parts of his brain until he starts playing Godowsky or Liszt... both of which, conincidentally, were served up after the Schubert. The A major sonata meanwhile did not suffer from his excess skill, though the outer movements (Allegro moderato and Allegro) were more convincing than a slightly angular Andante.

L. Godowsky, Complete Studies on Chopin's Etudes, M.-A. Hamelin Hyperion

But let's be honest: Godowsky or Alkan is what you'd want to hear in a Hamelin recital. Everything else would be like going to the Royal Shakespeare Theater Company and see them do Beckett - until someone yells "Get to the 'to-be-or-not-to-be part'!" It's part sensationalism, part voyeurism, but I consume it unapologetically because it is simply awesome to see someone play a work by a composer/pianist who thought that those Chopin études really were too darn easy. Hamelin seems to agree, as he played 9 of the 53 Studies after Chopin's Etudes as fleet and assuredly as one expects from him, even if it is against all pianistic probability. Some, if not most, of the studies are the keyboard equivalent of a violinist playing the melody in the left hand's pizzicato over a series of arpeggios on one string. Hearing the one dropped note in Mr. Hamelin's performance is as satisfying a rarity as spotting an ivory-billed woodpecker and takes nothing away from the awe that sets in rather quickly. I may have used the quip one too many times already, but it really was one of those performances that made you want to start playing the piano - or quit, if you already do. Hearing Study No. 1 (Etude No. 1, op. 10, on steroids and acid) alone was a perverse and stunning delight. Next time, though, I want him to play the mirror inversion backwards with a blindfold.

F. Liszt, Liszt at the Opera, Leslie Howard Hyperion

More of the daunting, delicious stuff after intermission. The Liebestod via Franz Liszt asks for Liszt-typical technical proficiency, Wagner-appropriate weight, and Debussy-like colors. Two out of three - and I am not being facetious - ain't bad. To say that the last bit of evocativenes was missing might be true, but it would be criticism of playing on such a high level that it would border on casuistry. If I thought no such thing missing from the concert paraphrase of Verdi's Ernani, I hope that was due to the playing (super fine, drizzled arpeggios) or the character and demands of the work and not due to my (inherent?) bias towards Verdi. Reminiscences de 'Norma', as the name suggests, is another step further removed from a straightforward transcription such as Isolden's Liebestod or the already more losely based 'Ernani'. Whether these works are worthy compositions in their own right or concert-hall hodge-podge entertainers doesn't really matter, because they are impressive and, well..., entertaining enough to remain in the repertoire even in an age where we could all go home and download the whole of Ernani, Tristan und Isolde, and Norma onto our iPods or at least listen to it in the library the next day. Yes, they are in part show-off works, but then that's why we stand in line to see a a pianist's pianist like Marc-André Hamelin, isn't it? Spectacular it was and impressive - or depressing - depending on your level of piano-playing ambition.

Anyone, meanwhile, who saw the jam-packed Mannes College concert hall with an audience of an average age of near or even below 30 might hesitate to spell out doom for the future of American classical music concert audiences. By the time all the piano connoisseur-tweens have reached their 40s, they'll have spread the passion manifold among acquaintances, friends, and lovers. They also got a few encores on the way, including a Chopin/Liszt Polish Song, a work titled "Anamorphosis" by Salvatore Sciarr(in)o that was a hilarious and self-deprecating study (part Ravel, part "Singing in the Rain"), and Antheil's riotous and painfully funny Jazz Sonata - one of the "most perfect musical crimes ever committed" according to Mr. Hamelin.