Among the accolades the Hamelin has received are 7 Juno awards and 11 Grammy nominations. He has also made over 70 recordings with Hyperion Records and maintains a busy schedule that takes him to concert halls around the world.
Yesterday, I spoke with Hamelin via Zoom about the music that he will play. Here is an edited version of our conversation.
Is there a particular reason that you have put these pieces by Ives, Schumann, and Ravel on the same program?
Hamelin: I love these pieces, and I think that they balance well with each other.
When did you first encounter the “Concord Sonata”?
Hamelin: I’ve been living with the Ives for almost 50 years. It was a point of introduction for me into newer music. I was 13. My father was a subscriber to Clavier magazine. In October of 1974, Clavier celebrated an Ives centennial with a special edition. It had a lot of articles about his piano music and several had several references to his Concord Sonata. Our local little record shop had a copy of John Kirkpatrick’s second recording of it in 1968 on Columbia. So I bought it. It was the first record that I had ever purchased for myself. It was in June, and I listened to it for a whole summer. It opened up a new language, a new way of doing things musically. I was schooled in the standard repertoire, but I wanted to explore what else was out there.
The Ives was a pleasurable shock, and later in September I got the score. I played it for my master’s recital at university. That was in 1985, and I was 23. The first half of the program was the “Concord Sonata.” The second half was the Chopin “Barcarolle” and Prokofiev’s “Seventh Piano Sonata.”
Ives said of his “Concord Sonata” that it is more like a group of four pieces. They are composite pictures of the Transcendentalist New England writers: Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau. About three-quarters of the piece is not barred. It is meter-less, actually – a very free discourse. The music has very little harmonic logic to it, although it actually works. It is really beyond analysis.
The most digitally demanding movement is the Hawthorne movement. It goes very, very fast. The most approachable are the last two movements, and I have seen The Alcotts movement included in anthologies so that it could be approached by amateurs.
Tell us a little about Schumann’s “Waldszenen” (Forest Scenes).
Hamelin: They are wonderful sound-pictures, much like his “Kinderszenen” (Scenes from Childhood) and “Kreisleriana.” I really owe my awakening to the “Waldszenen” because of a great Italian teacher, Maria Curcio. She went into detail about the character of each piece. They are among Schumann’s most successful works even though they are comparatively late in his career. In some cases, his creative powers grew weaker over time, but the “Waldszenen” is a late gem.
Give us your take on Ravel's "Gaspard de la nuit."
Hamelin: I think that the “Gaspard de la nuit” is one of the most shattering original works for piano ever written. That piece and the Boulez “Second Sonata” are the highest pieces in all of Twentieth Century piano literature, because of what they communicate. Each of the three movements of “Gaspard de la nuit” illustrate a prose poem from a collection of poems by Aloysius Bertrand. And Gaspard is more or less the devil in stories told by a mysterious figure. The flavor of the French poem is somewhat lost in translation. What makes the music so great is how much Ravel’s imagination translated the poetry into musical form. There are some gob smacking slashes of genius in there. Each time I go back to the piece, I just marvel at how the music translates the poems so well – not line by line but the general flavor.
What is next for you afteryou leave Portland?
Hamelin: I will be playing in Amsterdam, then Rome and Hamburg in November.
Safe travels!
Hamelin: Thanks!
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