Remarkable music played remarkably well: that’s Marc-André Hamelin’s trademark. Jessica Duchen finds the extraordinary French-Canadian pianist turning his hand to everything from Beethoven to the present day – including his own compositions
INTERVIEW
I’m listening to some Variations on a Theme of Paganini, but not as you’ve ever heard them before. It’s well-trodden ground, or so you’d think; Brahms, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Lutosławski and Andrew Lloyd Webber have aIl been here before. This version, however, sounds at times like Conlon Nancarrow on acid, so effervescent and off-the-wall that you can’t quite believe an actual human being is playing it. There are unmistakable references to Rachmaninov, a sudden chunk of Beethoven’s Op 109, and a variation in which musical meanderings are interrupted repeatedly by snippets of tonal cadences. The mix of inventiveness, inquisitiveness and humour in this music is something unique, written and played by Marc-André Hamelin.
Given the historic tradition of pianists composing or improvising – and these arts were scarcely separated until the advent of recording began to change people’s priorities – it seems not a moment too soon for the 21st century to appreciate composer-pianists of its own. Hamelin, Stephen Hough and Gabriela Montero are the real deal, and Hamelin, now 62, has been finding himself increasingly in demand for commissions.
The Variations are the first and biggest piece on his latest album Hamelin – New Piano Works, entirely devoted to his compositions (and it even includes a piece called My Feelings About Chocolate). It marks the 30th anniversary of his relationship with the record label Hyperion; seemingly the company and Hamelin’s devoted following of passionate pianophiles just can’t get enough of him.
Hamelin, speaking to me from his home in Boston, is pragmatic about all these achievements. ‘Every single piece on the disc, except for the ‘Paganini Variations’, is a commission of some sort, either private or official,’ he says. ‘The reason for this recording is that all of these scores are published, but I realised that pianists won’t want to explore the pieces unless they can hear them. That’s really why I made it; aside from the listening public, it was to help pianists get more to grips with the music. It includes almost everything I’ve published within the last ten to 12 years so that they can now be found in one single place. It might make it look as if I have been more active compositionally recently than I
