French-Canadian pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin is not one to do things the standard way.
He quickly made that clear Wednesday evening, performing a program that could hardly have been more unusual or eclectic. And wonderfully so, it must be said.
His appearance concluded the first season of the Friends of Chamber Music’s new piano-recital series, which proved to be a box-office and artistic success. The chance to hear Hamelin, a superb artist who remains underappreciated in the United States, was reason enough to praise it.
He is a thoughtful, inquisitive and disciplined interpreter who is not above a little showmanship, as he demonstrated in the flashy first-half closer, Alexis Weissenberg’s “Sonate en etat de jazz.”
Hardly an easy-listening crossover work as its title might imply, the sonata consists of meditations on four musical styles, each refracted through an avant-garde, sometimes discordant aesthetic.
Hamelin captured the kinetic, often unsettled feel of this work and infused it with surprising depth, all while handily tackling its many wicked technical challenges.
The first half opened with arguably the evening’s highlights — Franz Josef Haydn’s Sonata in F major, Hob. XVI:23 and Sonata in B-flat major, Hob. XVI:41 (listed with the wrong movements in the program).
As Hamelin made abundantly clear, these surprisingly little- played works are exquisite gems. He has an obviously innate affinity for them, showing there is more substance to each than might seem at first.
He brought a bubbly exuberance to the opening movement of the first and longest sonata, following it up with a probing, transporting take on the slow movement before dashing off the finale with a flourish.
After beginning the second half with two works by Frederic Chopin, Hamelin, who also happens to be a fine composer, turned to two of his works, each compelling in its way.
He followed the dense, tightly interwoven Etude No. 8, “Erlkönig” (after Goethe), with an entrancing, introspective arrangement for left hand of Tchaikovsky’s “Lullaby.”
The program ended with an airy, suitably waltzlike version of Leopold Godowsky’s Symphonic Metamorphosis on Johann Strauss’ “Wine, Woman and Song.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
