Marc-Andre Hamelin promises to deliver on the high expectations for his performance in Denver Wednesday.
“All the pieces that I love, I am playing in Denver,” said Hamelin, who will be closing the Friends of Chamber Music’s inaugural piano series at Gates Concert Hall.
“Take Alexis Weissenberg’s jazz sonata — it’s such a personal view of dance forms like the tango and the Charleston. The harmonic systems he employs make for a very rich, dense experience.”
The same has been said of Hamelin, the French Canadian pianist-composer, whose own works are included in the program.
In addition to a couple of Haydn sonatas, two Chopin works and Leopold Godowsky’s Symphonic Metamorphoses on Johann Strauss’ “Wine, Women and Song,” Hamelin will perform two of his recently composed etudes.
“They are part of my soon-to-be-completed project to compose an etude in every minor key,” said the virtuoso, who began his piano studies at age 5 on the urging of his pharmacist father. “I was much younger when I started the project, but then, composing was never the preponderance of my work. I think of myself as a pianist who writes, not the other way around.”
Hamelin describes his compositional style as “tonal with lots of chromaticism.”
“I can certainly write atonal music, and I’ve written sketches in that vein,” he said. “But what I aim for in these etudes is quite different. One of them in particular, No. 8, references Franz Schubert’s “Erlkönig” for voice and piano.
“The setting of my piece adheres to the text from this Goethe poem and, in theory, it could also be sung. A little like Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs Without Words.'”
While Hamelin performed in Denver years ago under the auspices of the Denver Chamber Orchestra and its then-music director JoAnn Falletta — he’s far better known in Europe than stateside.
“Unfortunately, I was stuck with rather ineffective management from ’86 to ’99,” he said. “But since I’ve been with Colbert Artists, my engagements in the states have been multiplying. My career has really developed in Europe, but I’m glad that the rate of my U.S. engagements has improved dramatically as well.”
And critics have been raving. Said Alex Ross of “The New Yorker:” “Hamelin’s legend will grow — right now there is no one like him.”
Locals will have the chance to hear Hamelin again Sept. 18 when he performs Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat, Op. 44 with the Takacs Quartet at the Lakewood Cultural Center.
The quintet will tour the Schumann work through May 2009 in nine stops here and abroad. Final performances at St. Georges Bristol will be recorded for Hyperion.
Hamelin’s other recordings on the same label include the complete Godowsky Studies on Chopin’s Études, which won the 2000 Gramophone Instrumental Award. Most recently, he won the 2008 Juno Award for Classical Album of the Year in the solo or chamber ensemble category for his interpretation of Charles-Valentin Alkan’s epic and highly technical Concerto for Solo Piano, Op. 39.
