In the music world, there
are pianists, and then there is Marc-André Hamelin. This incredible musician
has the ability to make the most difficult, complex music sound easy, even
effortless. Yesterday’s recital by the great Canadian pianist was one of the
greatest feats of piano playing I had heard in a long time.
The first half of
Hamelin’s recital was devoted to the music of Franz Liszt. In the opening work,
the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 in A minor,
Hamelin conveyed the improvisatory feeling of the opening measures (malinconico). It was in the vivace section that we first witnessed
Hamelin’s effortless virtuosity, tossing off the runs (e molto leggiero) and the repeated notes (leggiero molto) with a lightness that was breathtaking. Hamelin’s
technical abilities were so far above the challenges of the music that the
closing octave and chordal passages sounded positively exhilarating.
The third work in Liszt’s
Harmonies poétiques et religieuses,
the Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
is, for me, one of the composer’s most profoundly beautiful works. In the
opening, Hamelin made the awkward right hand accompaniment sound smooth and
floating, at the same time projecting the gorgeous left hand melody. More
importantly, the artist conveyed the spiritual core of the music. The climatic
passages sounded absolutely exultant, but never forced.
The Fantasy and Fugue on
the Theme B-A-C-H once again reminded us of Hamelin’s awesome command of the
keyboard as well as his awareness of the architecture of the work. Under his
hands, this somewhat loosely constructed work took on a logic that is sometimes
missing. In the more dramatic passage, Hamelin conjured up such massive
sonorities that the sound of the piano took on orchestral qualities. It
reminded me of the incident when Liszt himself played his transcription of
Belioz’s March to the Scaffold, from
his Symphonie Fantastique. Under
Liszt’s hands, the work became more effective on the piano than even the
orchestra.
In all three Liszt works
that made up the first half of his recital, Hamelin held the music within a
tight rhythmic framework, thereby giving the music an appealing restraint and a
sense of nobility.
With any Hamelin recital,
there would always be the new and unexpected, and the discovery in the second
half had to be Samuil Feinberg’s Sonata
No. 4 in E-flat minor, Op. 6. A Russian pianist and composer who lived
between the years 1890 to 1962, Feinberg’s work is stylistically reminiscent of
Scriabin. A one-movement work of about 10-minute duration, there is, within
that relatively short time, a myriad of moods, textures, and tempi. Once again,
Hamelin was able to make sense of, or allow us to see the logic behind, this
complex work. Regardless of how dense the pianistic forest is, this remarkable
artist always seemed to see his way clearly through.
Hamelin continued the
second half with Claude Debussy’s Images,
Book 1. The entire performance was ravishing, in a cool, objective kind of way.
It was not the kind of beauty with great splashes of colour, like a Monet or a
Renoir, but one of absolute textual clarity, and an unerring evenness of touch
and tone. He played Reflets dans l’eau
with little of the rubato that the
composer indicated. Hamelin seemed to be operating within a rather narrow range
of sonorities. Even the big transition to E-flat major was somehow underplayed.
That said, it was a performance that has its own logic and exquisiteness. In Hommage à Rameau, Hamelin conveyed the
feeling of emptiness and nothingness in the opening of the work. He evoked
beautiful sonorities from the piano in Commeneer
un peu au dessous du mouvement, building the music up to its incredible
climax before returning to the desolate landscape of the opening. In Mouvement, Hamelin played the triplets
with the most incredible lightness and evenness that took one’s breath away.
The decrescendo towards the end of
the work (presque plus rien) was the
most beautiful I had ever heard.
Not surprisingly, Hamelin
pulled out all his pianistic stops with the final work on the programme,
Leopold Godowsky’s Symphonic Metamorphosis
of Wine, Women and Song. Hamelin is one of the few contemporary pianists
with the courage, not to mention the superhuman pianistic chops required to
play these Godowsky “reworkings” of Johann Strauss. Needless to say, the
playing was both musically impeccable and pianistically stunning. My only
quibble was that it was a little lacking in a sense of fun, or the feeling that
he was pulling an incredible stunt (which he was).
Under the urging of the
appreciative audience, he gave us what would probably have been the Vancouver
premiere of his own Toccata “L’Homme
armé”. Written as the commissioned piece of the 2017 Van Cliburn
Competition, Hamelin’s work tests to the limit every pianist’s technical and
musical ability. Throughout the recital, I had the feeling that Hamelin
approaches each work with the insight of a composer. Here, we were witness to a
composer giving us his take on his own composition. It was a satisfying end to
an incredible afternoon of piano playing and musicianship.
Patrick May
March 5, 2018