The BBC Music Magazine Interview
Pianist Marc-andré Hamelin talks to Clemency Burton-hill ahead of his BBC Proms appearance
The Canadian pianist is renowned for an astonishing virtuosity but, he tells Clemency Burton-hill, his aim is to play the music as if it has never been heard before
‘You feel so damn special,’ says Marc-andré Hamelin. ‘It’s the occasion, it’s the audience, it’s the Royal Albert Hall – there’s really nothing like it in the world.’ The Canadian virtuoso is talking, of course, about the Proms, to which he’ll make a return this season to perform the world premiere of Ryan Wigglesworth’s new Piano Concerto alongside the Mozart Double Concerto. ‘I remember, back in 2011, I did a late-night all-liszt recital, and one of the pieces I played was the “Benediction of God in Solitude” from the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses. It’s a very quiet, reflective, beautifully calm piece. At some point I got out of my state of reverie and I realised – oh my god, there is actually an audience here. I’m not alone. There were probably twoand-a-half-thousand
people in the room. I’ve experienced a lot of good audiences, but the quality of that listening, it just sent a lightning bolt through me. I thought: this! This is what it’s all about.’
It is no wonder audiences tend to keep an awed, reverential silence at Hamelin gigs. At 57, the Montreal-born, Bostonbased pianist seems to be improving constantly, from an exceptional base. He has already released over 60 albums on Hyperion, with another lined up for November (a ravishing take on Dohnányi chamber music with the Takács Quartet); beyond the Proms, his season includes a solo recital at Wigmore and a return to the main stage of Carnegie Hall – now invariably an annual event. When we meet, the Wigglesworth premiere is only a few weeks away and Hamelin is yet to receive a complete score, but he is relaxed. Going right to the wire with a world premiere might faze others, but Hamelin’s facility with complex contemporary music is arguably unparalleled. (What he has seen of the concerto so far, he describes enthusiastically as ‘atonal, lyrical, lively.’) Although he has now recorded plenty of
‘‘When it comes to translating human emotions, the piano is the most perfect instrument I know’’
standard repertoire, his reputation as one of the most intrepid musical cratediggers and explorers of our time remains intact, with incisive, revelatory accounts of Medtner, Godowsky, Feinberg, Ives and Feldman among his crowning glories.
‘Right from the beginning, I never sought much career guidance,’ he laughs. ‘I did the things I wanted to do. And I think that probably slowed my progress in some ways: a lot of the population isn’t that ready to explore the unchartered corners of the repertoire; the human ear is not naturally wired for dissonance, and of course there’s the fear of the unknown. But I always wanted to make a little dent when it comes to repertoire appreciation.’ I think we can safely say he has achieved that, I joke. He laughs. ‘Well I’ve been sort of bulldozing away, to put it crudely, throwing mud on the wall, hoping some of it will stick. But I go with my gut. I always had the greatest reverence for something like the Medtner “Night Wind” Sonata, for example. There were critics who were baffled by it, but it enthralled me from beginning to end.’
These days, critics are rarely baffled by his output (‘thankfully!’): the recipient of many awards, he has built our trust and rewarded it richly, time and time again. That is largely, he insists, down to the unique recording relationship he has enjoyed with Hyperion over the past quarter century. ‘Right from the beginning, Mike Spring, the resident piano specialist, sought me out and gave me freedom to do what I loved, exploring this really obscure repertoire, or pieces that I felt had yet to find their place. Very gradually, as I built a trust with a recordbuying audience, I was able to do more standard recordings like Schumann or Shostakovich.’ Conceding that there is a certain irony to that unlikely trajectory, he says he now intentionally tries to strike a balance. ‘When I put recitals together I want to find the right mix. I think of the piano repertoire as an infinite field from which we can draw. We are so, so lucky.’
It’s not often that you hear an artist of this stature talk with such unabashed ardour, but Hamelin’s love for the piano clearly goes deep. Our conversation takes place in an auditorium at Steinway & Sons in New York, and from the moment we enter he seems magnetically drawn to the keyboard. I sit entranced as he noodles about. ‘The piano is the most beautiful and complete instrument,’ he muses. ‘It can whisper, it can talk, it can scream, and everything in between. When it comes to translating human emotions, it is the most perfect one I know.’
Such devotion finds its corollary in a spirit of humility and generosity not always seen among his peers. ‘Ultimately, a concert for me is an act of sharing,’ Hamelin says. ‘I am not there to showcase myself. That would be shallow. There is so much amazing music written for this instrument, and my main desire is to have the public take part in this act of discovery. If I have one guiding principle, it is to play anything, whether it’s Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata or Samuel Feinberg’s Third Sonata, as if nobody in the audience has ever heard it before.’ Does that approach extend to himself? Can he play the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata as if he has never heard it before? ‘Yes. I actually like to try to put myself in the composer’s skin, as if they were in the process of creating it.’
If anyone can manage this cognitive conjuring trick, it’s probably Hamelin, who has also proved himself a gifted composer. ‘Composing has always been absolutely essential to me and it’s becoming clearer and clearer to me now how it nurtures my piano playing,’ he says. ‘It helps me get closer to the composers whose work I perform, and it helps me make better decisions.’ Happily, given that he is on the road for ‘at least three quarters of the year’, he finds he can write on trains, planes, in hotels – and inspiration might strike anywhere. ‘It could be quite literally anything that sparks an idea,’ he reveals. ‘I make a lot of arrangements and
‘Now I think it’s much more enriching to be dazzled by simple things’
transcriptions; sometimes I say I’m better at elaborating on other people’s ideas than my own! But there are a few things that I’m really proud of – the Toccata on L’homme Armée that I wrote for the Van Cliburn competition in 2017; one of the [Grammynominated] 12 Études in the Minor Keys; a wordless etude based on Goethe’s text Erlkönig – I liked the way that came out.’ He smiles. ‘And a set of variations I wrote for my wife, early on in our relationship: that’s very close to me still.’
It was in 2003 that Hamelin, who was previously married to soprano Jody Karin Applebaum, made a fateful visit to Boston’s classical public radio station, WGBH, where he was to be interviewed by a broadcaster named Cathy Fuller. ‘And that was that,’ he shrugs. ‘I was never the same again. My wife is a golden presence in my life. She’s made me a better musician and person, and it’s a constant joy to be able to share each other’s musical thoughts. She’s someone that I really look up to. I know it’s a cliché, but I can truly say that our being together was meant to be.’
Cathy, as it happens, has also been the source of some of Hamelin’s most treasured recent musical discoveries, including a sonata in E minor by CPE
Bach, whose recording by Mikhail Pletnev she played on air one day. ‘When it comes to repertoire, I am not a planning sort of person,’ Hamelin confesses; ‘I have my ears and my heart open and I sort of go with whatever I catch. This little piece is only a few minutes long, but in the last movement CPE makes the rather amazing gesture of ending things in the middle of a phrase, on an inconclusive harmony. For 1784 or something, it’s really avant garde. That accidental discovery got me to explore his later work, and now I’m smitten.’
What is it, in particular, that has resonated? ‘When you’re young, you’re dazzled by virtuosity,’ he ventures. ‘Now I think it’s much more enriching to be dazzled by simple things. You couldn’t classify this sonata as difficult in any sense, pianistically, but that moment was a total shocker to me. I thought, how did this man dare to do this? It was amazement, really! And now I’ve found I cannot not perform him. One of his short pieces is opening my season programme.’
If a member of the Bach family might be a surprising figure for Hamelin, of all people, to be cheerleading, when I ask about other composers he’s set his sights on, I’m fully expecting to hear about some esoteric genius forgotten by history. Instead, without missing a beat, he replies: ‘Fauré. He’s a composer I adore, and I haven’t recorded him yet.’ Meanwhile, another work currently keeping him busy is Rachmaninov’s Étude Tableau, Op. 39 No. 5 in E flat minor. Not exactly a rarity. ‘It’s one of his very best short pieces,’ Hamelin says. ‘The way that he builds from a piano to a fortisissimo in the middle section, and how each phrase is more and more intense through those modulations, and how he just ratchets up the tension, my god, it really grips you.’ He grins, as if wonderstruck. ‘It’s the kind of thing that makes me think to myself: if I’d written that I could die!’
Marc-andré Hamelin performs Ryan Wigglesworth’s Piano Concerto at the Proms on 28 August; hear him at London’s Wigmore Hall on 21 September and at
New York’s Carnegie Hall on 22 October