Performer’s notes

Marc-andré Hamelin

Why record an album of your own compositions?

I have had the good fortune to have had some of my own musical scores published by Edition Peters. I’m not publishing these things just for myself to play – I want others to play them as well. But a published score on its own won’t mean much unless they can get to hear the music as well. Then they can decide whether they want to spend time with it.

Do you think it’s important for performers to try their hand at composing?

I wouldn’t expect all performers to be composers, but I think they should at least try their hand at it. There are several benefits – it teaches you to take composers’ intentions much more seriously, and can also help you make better interpretative decisions. If you compose, you are better placed to feel at least a little like the composers of the works you perform.

My feelings about chocolate:a great subject for a piano work. Tell us more…

My German manager is a bit of a collector, and had long been asking me for a manuscript of something I’d written. One day I was in a store and saw a German chocolate assortment in a nice wooden box, and it was named praline-sonata – chocolate sonata! So I resolved to write a short piece and to present the manuscript to him in the box. What emerged were some rather sultry, jazzy harmonies, and some markings that have been likened to those of Erik Satie – such as ‘let’s taste everything in this box’, ‘mmm, there are still a few left’, and the final ‘to hell with the diet… all gone!’.