Marc-André Hamelin

Mr. Hamelin has been acclaimed for his exploration of unfamiliar pianistic terrain such as the unjustly neglected works of Alkan, Busoni, Medtner, and Szymanowski. When he turns to the classic piano repertoire, his readings are praised for their mastery of style and effortless pianism. In the words of Scott Cantrell (Dallas Morning News) in reviewing a recent Hamelin performance of the final three Beethoven sonatas:

Mr. Hamelin is best known as a player of knuckle-busting late romantic repertory – Alkan, Medtner, Godowsky and the like. One doesn’t immediately think of him as a Beethoven pianist. Maybe that’s why his interpretations seemed so fresh, the music virtually new-minted. Immediately striking was the scaled-down dynamic range, reminding us that Beethoven composed for pianos far quieter than our steel-reinforced behemoths. So often played as grand orations from on high, these sonatas here seemed intimate confessions. But Mr. Hamelin wasn’t afraid of Beethoven’s sheer impetuousness. While most modern performances tend to keep pretty steady tempos between expressive pullbacks, these pressed ahead of the basic pulse as often as they pulled back from it. This wasn’t always the cleanest playing, but it rang true to the music – and the man who composed it. At the other end of the spectrum, the dreamy parts all but took leave of earth. The section of the A-flat major Sonata (Op.110) marked “Morning Song” was heart-rending.

(June 26, 2004)

During the 2005-06 season Mr. Hamelin’s orchestral engagements include Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 with the Montreal Symphony and the Austin Symphony, Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with the Dallas Symphony and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ontario, the Busoni Piano Concerto with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2 for the season-opening week of the New Jersey Symphony and Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Edmonton Symphony. Abroad he will perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Singapore Symphony and the Auckland Philharmonic and Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway.

Mr. Hamelin’s recital appearances for 2005-06 include Houston, the three Virginia cities of Charlottesville, Lexington and Richmond; Montreal with the Pro Musica Society, and a return to San Francisco Performances, his third in his three-year series of annual concerts there. In Europe he gives recitals in Seville, Bilbao, Paris, Warsaw, Bijloke, and a recital tour of the UK including Nottingham, Shropshire, York and Darlington.

Summer engagements in 2005 included his debut with the New York Philharmonic performing Liszt’s Totentanz, the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming, Le Domaine Forget in Quebec, a solo recital at Ravinia, a return visit to the Mannes College of Music’s International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, the European summer festivals of Lockenhaus, Lichfield, Petworth, the Ruhr Piano Festival and the Bayreuther Festpieler.

During the 2004-05 season Mr. Hamelin’s orchestral engagements included the season opening concerts playing Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the Montreal Symphony and Raphael Frubeck de Burgos, the Grieg Concerto with the London Philharmonic, the Alkan Concerto in C Sharp Minor and Chopin’s Concerto No. 2 with the CBC Radio Orchestra in Vancouver, Brahms Concerto No. 2 in Lahti, the Gershwin Concerto in F with Leonard Slatkin and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and a European tour playing the Saint-Saens Second Piano Concerto and Mozart’s Concerto No. 27 with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Richard Hickox. Mr. Hamelin’s exciting recital commitments included appearances at a variety of summer festivals: Santa Fe, Ravinia, Scotia, Schwetzingen, and the Weimar Liszt Festival, plus recitals in Canada, across the United States, and in Rome, Paris, Milan, and Edinburgh.

Mr. Hamelin ‘s 2003-04 season began with summer guest solo engagements with the Montréal Symphony conducted by Jacques Lacombe and the Detroit Symphony led by Ion Marin. Summer recital engagements were at the Mannes School’s International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York City, Ile d’Orléans in Quebec, and the Ottawa Chamber Music Society. A highpoint of the season were performances in Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, New York’s Miller Theater, and London’s Wigmore Hall of the rarely performed complete Iberia cycle of Issac Albeniz. Mr. Hamelin was also heard as guest soloist and recitalist on tour in the Far East, performing a recital in Tokyo and as soloist with the Tokyo Philharmonic conducted by Okko Kamu; a recital in Seoul, Korea; performances in Hong Kong with the Hong Kong Philharmonic under Maestro Kamu, and a Hong Kong recital. Mr. Hamelin also had extensive recital commitments throughout North America and in Europe was heard at the Gretna Festival Weimar, Liszt Festival, and Schloss vor Hosum.

Mr. Hamelin's schedule in earlier seasons included the Scotia Festival in Halifax where he also served as guest artistic director, and concerto engagements in Montréal and Toronto. He presented recitals in Philadelphia, Ottawa, Québec City, Tokyo, and the Miller Theater in New York, and completed a series of six recitals entitled "200 Years of Pianism with Marc-André Hamelin." Following the success of his June 1994 Wigmore Hall series called "Virtuoso Romantics," Mr. Hamelin was invited to give recitals on the Hall's Masterconcert Series and the International Piano Series at the South Bank. In 1999 he returned to Wigmore Hall for a three-part series called "Exploration & Celebration," and in spring 2000 Blackheath Halls presented a weekend of "Marc-André Hamelin & Friends." In November 2000 he gave a recital at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, and in early 2001 returned to New York to take part in the Liszt Series at the 92nd Street Y. Later in 2001 he played the Busoni Concerto with the Lahti Symphony, L'Orchèstre de la Suisse Romande and the Tokyo Philharmonic.

The 2004-05 season saw the release by Hyperion records of Mr. Hamelin’s recording of all four books of Albeniz’s “Iberia” in a 1998 “urtext” edition based on the composer’s manuscript, which is scattered among four libraries in Spain and the U.S. This disc has received extraordinary critical praise, most notably from senior critic James R. Oestreich of The New York Times:

This imposing masterpiece (“Iberia”), like so much of the Spanish piano repertory, has long been virtually the private preserve of the venerable Alicia de Larrocha, and Mr. Hamelin’s recording is as compulsively listenable as some of her best. Like Ms. De Larrocha, Mr. Hamelin commands an enormous range of touch and expression.

He is as comfortable in the languid meanderings of “Evocación” as in the pointed dance rhythms of “Rondeña,” and he modulates between such extremes with utter fluency. As part of this far-reaching sensibility, Mr. Hamelin is always alert to atmosphere, which is everything in this music. He fills out the album with other late works by Albéniz , including “La Vega,” España; Souvenirs” and “Navarra” (in a completion by William Bolcom). But perhaps the most delightful moment is in “Yvonne en Visite,” in which the poor young Yvonne is forced to play the piano in public and succumbs to a case of the jitters. Mr. Hamelin’s ability to sound so fumblingly artless here is artistry of the highest order. (May 29, 2005)

Elsewhere, in Gramophone (June 2005), piano authority Bryce Morrison writes:
Here is the most immaculate, effortless and refined of all Iberias. Where others fight to stay afloat, Marc-André Hamelin rides the crest of every formidable wave with nonchalant ease. Did, as Rubinstein once claimed, Albéniz need a helping hand in Iberia, simplifying textures for greater clarity, brilliance and accessibility? Hamelin’s musical grace mocks the very question…Hamelin’s Albéniz proudly but nonchalantly raises a new and astonishing standard.
This new Albéniz album followed upon the pianist’s recent releases of the piano concertos by Shostakovich and Rodion Schedrin, Ives’s “Concord” Sonata, the piano music of the elusive Russian Nikolai Kapustin, and a complete set of Godowsky’s phenomenally difficult arrangements of the Chopin Etudes – all for the Hyperion label. Mr. Hamelin’s interest in exploring both traditional and little-known repertoire is reflected in the extensive discography he has produced under exclusive contract to Hyperion records. His 30-plus recordings provide a veritable library of neglected works of positive merit and include concertos by Alkan, Bernstein, Bolcom, Henselt, Korngold and Joseph Marx, solo discs of Alkan (Canadian Juno Award 1996), Catoire, Grainger (Soundscapes Award 1997, Australia), Liszt, Reger, Roslavets, Rzewski, Schumann, Villa Lobos, "The Composer-Pianists: From Alkan to Hamelin" (Deutschen Schallplattenkritik Prize in 1997 & 1998), and the complete sonatas of both Medtner and Scriabin. His recording of the Busoni Concerto with the CBSO under Mark Elder received resounding critical acclaim, while the 2-CD album of the complete Chopin-Godowsky Etudes won the 2000 Gramophone Instrumental Award.

After receiving a double nomination for the Busoni concerto and the Chopin-Godowsky Etudes, Mr. Hamelin was the only classical artist to play live at the 2001 Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. He received another Grammy nomination in 2002 for his recording featuring the works of Alkan.

Winner of the 1985 Carnegie Hall Competition, Marc-André Hamelin was born in Montréal. He began to play the piano at the age of five, and by the age of nine had already won top prize in the Canadian Music Competition. Mr. Hamelin's father, a pharmacist by trade who was also a keen pianist, had introduced him to the works of Alkan, Medtner and Sorabji when he was still very young. His principal teachers were Yvonne Hubert, Harvey Wedeen and Russell Sherman; he also studied at the École Vincent d'Indy in Montréal and then at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he now makes his home.

Mr. Hamelin is featured in The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and the Eight by Robert Rimm, published by Amadeus Press.