Marc-André Hamelin
Marc-André Hamelin, OC, OQ is a Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer who has received 11 Grammy Award nominations. He is on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music.
Biography
Education
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Hamelin began his piano studies at the age of five. His father, a pharmacist who was also an amateur pianist, introduced him to the works of Charles-Valentin Alkan, Leopold Godowsky and Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji when he was still young. He studied at the École de musique Vincent-d'Indy in Montreal with Yvonne Hubert and then at Temple University in Philadelphia with Harvey Wedeen. In 1989, he received the Virginia Parker Prize.Performances and recordings
Hamelin has given recitals in many cities. His festival appearances have included Bad Kissingen, Belfast, Cervantino, La Grange de Meslay, Husum Piano Rarities, Lanaudière, Ravinia, La Roque d’Anthéron, Ruhr Piano, Halifax, Singapore Piano, Snape Maltings Proms, Mänttä Music Festival, Turku and Ottawa Strings of the Future, as well as the Chopin Festivals of Bagatelle, Duszniki and Valldemossa.He appears regularly in both the Wigmore Hall Masterconcert Series and the International Piano Series at London’s South Bank Centre. He plays annually in the Herkulessaal in Munich and has given a series of recitals in Tokyo.
In 1994, Hamelin recorded the piano concerto of Adolf von Henselt with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Martyn Brabbins. The technical difficulties of this work had prevented it from becoming well-known despite admiration from Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt.
On June 21, 2001, Hamelin performed the Piano Concerto of Busoni with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva, Switzerland.
In 2005, Hamelin performed the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 4 at the Grand Teton Music Festival conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier
In 2006, Hamelin performed the Saint-Saëns Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Bochumer Symphoniker conducted by Steven Sloane.
In 2012, Hamelin performed the Nikolai Medtner Piano Concerto No. 2 in Moscow with the National Philharmonic of Russia conducted by Dmitry Vasiliev.
In 2020, he performed with the Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, on a special livestream concert with Violinist Lara St. John and the Ulysses Quartet due to worldwide restrictions related to the Covid 19 Pandemic.
Hamelin has recorded a wide variety of composers' music with the Hyperion label. He is well known for his attention to lesser-known composers, especially of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and for performing works by pianist-composers Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatté, Leopold Godowsky, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Kaikhosru Sorabji, Alexander Scriabin, Nikolai Kapustin, Franz Liszt, Nikolai Medtner and Frederic Rzewski.
Hamelin recorded the Johannes Brahms Piano Quartets with the Leopold String Trio.
Hamelin has also composed several works, including a set of piano études in all of the minor keys; completed in 2009, it was published by C. F. Peters, with a recording released on Hyperion. A cycle of seven pieces, Con Intimissimo Sentimento, was published by Ongaku No Tomo Sha; and a transcription of Zequinha de Abreu's Tico-Tico No Fubá has been published by Schott Music. Although the majority of his compositions are for solo piano, he has also written three pieces for player piano, and several works for other instruments, including Fanfares for three trumpets, published by Presser. His other works are distributed by the Sorabji Archive.
Awards and honours
In 1985, Hamelin won the Carnegie Hall International Competition for American Music; he made his recital debut at Carnegie Hall in 1988.His recording of Leopold Godowsky's complete Studies on Chopin's Études won the 2000 Gramophone Magazine Instrumental Award.
In 2004, Hamelin received the international record award in Cannes.
He has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Québec.
He has won seven Juno Awards, most recently in 2012 for Classical Album of the Year: Solo or Chamber Ensemble, for his Liszt Piano Sonatas album.
Critical appraisal
Writing in The New Yorker in 2000, senior critic Alex Ross said: "Hamelin’s legend will grow—right now there is no one like him." Later in 2010, Ross added that Hamelin was ranked highly by piano connoisseurs, and "admired for his monstrously brilliant technique and his questing, deep-thinking approach."In 2015, Zachary Woolfe, classical music editor of The New York Times, noted Mr. Hamelin's "preternatural clarity and control, qualities that in him don’t preclude sensitivity even poetry".