Marc-André Hamelin is one of the greatest living adventurers on the piano.
No one plays the avant-gardists of yesterday and the day before yesterday with as much virtuosic brilliance and artistic conviction as the multi-award-winning Canadian Marc-André Hamelin. Whether Scriabin, Roslavets, Medtner, Busoni, Ornstein, Antheil, Gulda, Kapustin or Feldman: Hamelin makes us firstly take these innovators seriously and secondly enjoy them. There is no doubt that Hamelin is both a thinker and a virtuoso. His playing has been called “monstrous”, even “superhuman”. Following his album Études from 2010, he is now once again presenting small piano works from his own production (2011-2020).
He does not consider himself a great composer by any means, but he is a musician in whom countless artistic impulses converge and occasionally call for a creative outlet. His pieces are mostly short: miniatures or cycles of miniatures. For example, the 14 Variations on the frequently varied Paganini Caprice No. 24 reflect a number of inspirations from Chopin, Rachmaninov, Alkan, among other favorite composers of Hamelin’s – inspirations which, however, seem deliberately broken in an intellectual and humorous way. Hamelin’s little pieces of music are, of course, pianistically sensational and overwhelmingly virtuosic. But they are also always contemporary, eclectic and pumped up with dissonances. Fun on many levels.
Marc-André Hamelin – New Piano Works
Marc-André Hamelin
Label: Hyperion
Format: CD