Cover image: Marc-André Hamelin, piano (Photo: Sim Cannety-Clarke)
At Meany Center‘s Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater (formerly Meany Theater), pianist Marc-André Hamelin’s recital program Wednesday night promised to be a refreshingly interesting one, with three works not frequently heard, plus a Bach arrangement and two works by Chopin.
Alas, Hamelin’s musical choices for the first half of the program turned out to be bitterly disappointing. He played an arrangement by Busoni of the Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No. 2.
As Bach wrote it, this is a magnificent piece of musical architecture, its bones and structure transparent, its arching shape clear, its beauty unmistakable, but Busoni, who made quite listenable arrangements of other works, made a hash of this one. Instead of majestic, it was grandiose. One could hear Bach’s melodies, half obscured and their beauty lost in a dense mishmash of notes and embroidery, but none of Bach’s brilliant development. Surprisingly the piano Hamelin played also seemed to be not the right instrument for this. Its sound felt flattened, with little roundness to the tone quality, though in the second half of the program this was no longer apparent.
Next up came the Sonata No. 3 by Russian Samuel Feinberg, who composed it during the first World War after he was invalided to of the army. It’s an odd 25-minute late-Romantic style work which rambles often forcefully, occasionally tenderly, in shapeless manner and goes off at unexpected tangents. Feinberg was a notable pianist, and the work requires brilliant skill from the player, which Hamelin certainly has, but despite his nuanced playing, the work is not particularly appealing.
It was a relief to turn in the second half to a different kind of arrangement, by Alexis Weissenberg, of six songs by the French singer/songwriter Charles Trenet, witty cabaret ballads which lent themselves admirably to piano transcription. By the sound of them the songs came from the 1930s. As Hamelin played them, they felt irresistibly danceable, with Charleston rhythms for some, slow sensuous cheek-to-cheek waltzes in others, a foxtrot or two as well. A delight. Hamelin followed these with a Debussyesque piece by Castelnuovo-Tedesco called “Cipressi” (“Cypresses”), an evocative sound painting of the trees in a small Tuscan town he knew well. As with the Weissenberg, Hamelin caught the mood perfectly.
He finished the program with two Chopin works, the Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major and the Scherzo No. 4 in E Major. Both of these he played with exquisite nuance and thoughtful phrasing, sometimes with a touch as light as a feather, at others rippling full speed light but accurate, sometimes with the kind of energy Chopin elicits.
He came back after applause for an encore which sounded like a pair of hummingbirds winging around and occasionally having territorial fights, but it was actually “Feux d’artifice” (“Fireworks”), the last work of Preludes Book II.
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