Charles-Valentin Alkan - Concerto for solo piano (Marc-André Hamelin)

Information

Composer: Charles-Valentin Alkan

• (01) Concerto for solo piano
• (04) Recueil de chants, Op. 65

Marc-André Hamelin, piano
Date: 2007
Label: Hyperion
http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA67569

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Review

This is Marc-André Hamelin’s second recording of the Alkan Concerto for Solo Piano (the first for Music & Arts dates from 1992 – 8/93) and his fifth Alkan CD for Hyperion. Yet following in the pioneering footsteps of Raymond Lewenthal and, more particularly, Ronald Smith, Hamelin now trumps his previous ace with a performance of the Concerto of such brilliance and lucidity that one can only listen in awe and amazement. Scaling even the most ferocious hurdles with yards to spare, he is blessedly free to explore the very heart of Alkan’s bewildering interplay of austerity and monstrous elaboration. In the gigantic first movement you can hear avalanches of notes, at, for example, 3'55" and 8'06", given with the rarest focus and trenchancy. And whether you turn to the finale’s helter-skelter pages (with their curious Eastern underpinnings) or the baleful centralAdagio, you can only marvel at such a unique mix of blazing if nonchalantly deployed virtuosity and poetic conviction.

For his substantial encore Hamelin gives us Alkan’s Troisième recueil de chants where outward convention vies with that sinister and pervasive oddity so central to this composer’s nature. No 3 is a near bitonal canon, No 4 a polonaise with memories of the Etudes from which the Concerto is drawn and a crazy, race-away coda, while the concluding Barcarolle contains ironic echoes of Liszt’s Au lac de Wallenstadt.

All this is superbly recorded and presented, prompting some not unreasonable conjecture: if Liszt feared Alkan’s mastery as a pianist he may well have feared Hamelin’s.

-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone

More reviews:

ClassicsToday  ARTISTIC QUALITY: 10 / SOUND QUALITY: 10

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Nov07/Alkan_Hamelin_CDA67569.htm

http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_cd_review.php?id=5370

http://www.amazon.com/Alkan-Concerto-Troisi%C3%A8me-recueil-chants/dp/B000TT1QM8

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Charles-Valentin Alkan (30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French composer and pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Chopin and Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, where he spent virtually his entire life. His music requires extreme technical virtuosity, reflecting his own abilities. Busoni ranked Alkan with Liszt, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms as one of the five greatest composers for the piano since Beethoven. For much of the 20th century, Alkan's work remained in obscurity, but from the 1960s onwards it was steadily revived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Valentin_Alkan

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Marc-André Hamelin (born September 5, 1961 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer. Hamelin is recognized worldwide for the originality and technical brilliance of his performances of the classic repertoire. He has made recordings of a wide variety of composers with the Hyperion label. He is well known for his attention to lesser-known composers especially of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and for performing works by pianist-composers. Hamelin has also composed several works, including a set of piano études in all of the minor keys.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc-Andr%C3%A9_Hamelin

http://www.marcandrehamelin.com/

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