UNCOVERING THE GEMS
Pianist Marc-André Hamelin is drawn to pieces that are richly written, which often means he is playing the more difficult gems
Pianist Marc-André Hamelin is drawn to pieces that are richly written — the more difficult, the better.
Inside any great artist is the heart of an explorer who searches out and finds the centre of sublime works of music and brings them to audiences around the world. This is Marc-André Hamelin, who is justifiably one of Canada’s great solo pianists working today along with Angela Hewitt and Janina Fialkowska.
Hamelin brings his formidable talent to Ottawa Chamberfest 2013 on Saturday and in his way he will introduce Ottawa audiences to an artist they may not know.
In this instance the artist is Charles-Valentin Alkan. It is 200 years since Alkan’s birth and likely not many people knew that fact. No matter.
According to Hamelin, in a recent interview over the phone from his home in Boston, Mass., the Alkan piece was a special request from Roman Borys, Chamberfest’s artistic director, to commemorate the Alkan bicentenary.
“He (Alkan) was all set to become a major force in 19th-century music. He was a formidable virtuoso at the keyboard and he started writing music very early on and got noticed and played all over the place,” Hamelin said.
But his personality got in the way. Alkan would become a recluse before middle age. He rarely left his home and died at age 75. It’s been speculated, Hamelin says, that Alkan may have had Aspberger’s, but there is no way of really knowing.
Despite his issues, Alkan continued to compose and is mostly known, Hamelin says, for writing very difficult piano works; works that demand a lot of the pianist but that are also “tremendously original.” These are the kinds of works Hamelin is known for playing, but he does demur.
“Many people think I am attracted to difficult works just because they are difficult. Not so, I am attracted to good music. The only reason I go on stage is to share the music. I love to share the miracle of creativity that is composition. If the work is difficult, it is usually the result of the fact that I enjoy pieces that are richly written and that treat the piano orchestrally.
“If I like the music enough I will do anything to bring it to audiences. I just plug and plug away and gradually it gets done.”
It all sounds very workmanlike, but if you want to be an artist, this is what must be done.
“I’m perfectly aware that some people think: ‘Aw come on, get off it, you like to play difficult music.’ I wish these things were easier. That would mean less blood, sweat and tears to bring them to the public and I could do more.”
But he is, in a sense, trapped by his own love of piano writing that “is rich and dense and full of colour.”
This started early with Hamelin. In fact, he was aware of Alkan at about age seven or eight. That’s thanks to his father, who was a pharmacist by day and a lover of the piano 24/7.
“My father, who was very interested in these things and who was a very good amateur pianist, brought home one day a recording of Alkan’s piano music along with the score and we sat down and listened to the recording and followed along with the score. So I became aware of these things almost as soon as I was aware of Chopin and Schubert and Liszt.
“My dad was a total pianophile. This wasn’t his main profession, he was a pharmacist. Piano was his clear love. He loved to play and I loved to listen to him. He always wanted to share what he loved.”
Hamelin started playing at age five and showed early promise, which encouraged his father.
“He felt that he could show me these things and I could absorb them. He watched my development very closely but he didn’t stifle me. That is something that I have to give my parents credit for. My mother is still alive. They never stifled me.
“They had to remind me to practice pretty often. (However) they never said: ‘ You are going to do four hours a day or you won’t get your supper’. This is probably heresy for piano teachers, but I really do not believe that one should set an aim of practising four or five hours a day. I prefer to think in terms of goals myself.
“Practising is solving an endless series of problems. Practising is not just sitting down and mechanically doing exercises and thinking about something else. That’s worthless.
“I remember two sisters that I know who were practising hours every day until they were in the mid to late 20s, one was a pianist and one a violinist. They both quit because they realized they had been doing it only to please their mother. They both got very accomplished. But they had very little joy in it.”
For Hamelin, “the rush of accomplishment is one thing, but what is even more satisfying and frankly what is the point of it all is that the public be enriched.” Otherwise you might as well be in the basement by yourself.
‘The aura of mystery encircling the profession is one of the most appealing to me.’ MARC-ANDRé HAMELIN Concert pianist
Hamelin says he always tries to see the mind of the composer. It helps him take even a well-known piece like the Haydn Keyboard Sonata in C minor beyond conventional wisdom.
“I confronted this once many, many years ago in 1989 when I was asked to play the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto for the first time. I thought how am I going to do this, it’s so well-known. And then I tried to put myself in the mind of Tchaikovsky when he came up with this amazing melodic material.
“And that saved me. I hate to use the word reinventing, but maybe that was my intention. I like to play it like it’s supposed to be.”
Still, after many years of performing and recording, Hamelin gets a rush when he finds something new.
“It’s a thrill. It sounds childish, but all I want to do then is just show people how marvellous this (new thing) is.”
There is a tendency to play it safe in performance and on a CD. On one hand, the public may fear the unknown and musicians may fear it will be too tough to get an obscure piece accepted. The business case isn’t there.
But that’s not Hamelin’s way. His label Hyperion clearly trusts his artistic direction and reviewers are full of praise so, so far so good.
But the future is not without its dark clouds. The year 2012 was an alarming turning point in CD sales for the major classical labels, he says. “I would hate to lose the CD as an object. I may be an old fogey, but to me downloads are meaningless. I will do them whenever I need them if I need to hear something quickly. I will buy a track, but otherwise downloads are completely unattractive to me.
“I really feel for young people. There is a proliferation of young talent now and what are they going to do to distinguish themselves? That is beyond me.
“Most artists will tell you that we work in solitude. Many of us seek opinions, reassurance and contradictions because we are always questioning ourselves.
“The thing is, we are not necessarily going to find answers or we may think we have answers and these are going to be refuted or thrown back into question.
“The aura of mystery encircling the profession is one of the most appealing to me.”
However, his future isn’t all bad nor is it all that mysterious. He will play in Paris next year at a major festival and hopes for a breakthrough in that market. He’s also in a new relationship “with the ideal woman” (hence the home in Boston). And he is looking forward to working within a year or so with Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.