jwilzewske: hamelin

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Marc-André Hamelin’s Impressionism: Place, Memory & Identity

I wrote a Prelude and Fugue without thinking it would be part of a collection. Then gradually the idea [for composing a set of Etudes] came to me, because I was inspired by the Twelve Etudes in the Minor Keys by [the French composer] Alkan. I was playing a lot of [his pieces] at the time. But [while these Etudes were composed incrementally, over 25 years beginning in 1986] the ‘cycle’ didn’t really take shape until just a little while ago... When I had about nine of them finished, that’s when I got a letter out of the blue from C.F. Peters asking whether they could publish my Etudes. So that was really an incentive to finish the series.”
— Marc-André Hamelin, interview with Topher Levin.

M arc- André Hamelin’s Harriman-Jewell Series recital on Saturday evening explored the relation of the individual to ‘place’—impressions and memories of place and identity.

Berg - Piano Sonata, Op. 1
Liszt - Piano Sonata in B minor
Debussy - Préludes, Book 2 (excerpts): La puerta del vino, Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses, Les tierces alternées, Feux d’artifice
Hamelin - Twelve Études In All The Minor Keys (excerpts): Études 2, 7, 8, 11, and 12

H aving never heard them before, the 13-minute Berg Sonata and the 24-minutes of excerpts from Hamelin’s ‘12 Études in All the Minor Keys’ were, for me, the highlights of the performance.

T he 12 Études are like a time-lapse self-portrait of Hamelin as a person and as a musician. Each person’s identity is actively created: of that there is no doubt. Impressions of new experiences and memories of experiences past engage us on a lifelong, daily basis as each of us constructs our [multiple] identities, multiple personae. The dimensions explored in these Études include the body [including the left-hand Étude, No. 7], the neighborhood and community and nation, Time (the epoch in which you live or the person remembered lived), and our mobility between settings (émigréness)—some settings that we ‘own’ or belong to; other ones that are not ours, or that we are displaced from against our wishes, or that we out-live—how these all shape, and are shaped by, people’s identities.

U nlike some composers, I don’t regard writing for one hand as an opportunity to display pianistic proficiency. Instead, I consider it a fascinating compositional constraint. There is not much point in composing for one hand unless one tries to make the textures as rich as possible, and it is a special delight to make one hand sound like two.”
— Marc-André Hamelin, program notes.

T hese Études argue that sense-of-place and belonging are the result of our imagination as individuals and as families, communities, societies... that our identities are actively constructed over time, not passively received. Our narratives of place-situated belonging and identity are time-sensitive, context-sensitive. They mutate and evolve. They are a product of the things that we hold dear, fear, obsess over, remember; they are a product of where and with whom we spend most of our time. Hamelin is very modest about the happenstantial way in which the Études came to be the way they are—asserting that they merely or mostly accumulated over time; that they were never envisioned as a collection of 12 and were never meant to be autobiographical. And yet a great part of their beauty, I think, is that they are this 25-year pianistic portrait of his own personal Canadian narrative.

T hat they are all in minor keys is, I hope, not a consequence of his living in Boston!

H amelin’s encore, an obscure Prelude by Leonid Sabaneyev (1881–1968), was a captivating little character piece, mysterious, inviting, poignant, jewel-like... a by-now-nostalgic example of Soviet modernism embodying the will of the individual rather than the Party. Self-actualization of each comrade, is what it sounds like. Contemplate, if you will, the utopian dream of the national unity of free-spirit comrades creating, producing, acting in concert, is what it seems to suggest. This Prelude made me think, among other things, of how ungodly far humanity has come (regressed?) in 100 years! The things that, to many, once seemed reachable, in one’s own country! It feels like we are all émigrés now...

T he ineffable qualities of instrumental music meant that the authorities continued to regard music as a less-than-critical ideological arena.”
— Amy Nelson, Music for the Revolution, p. 243.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Marc-André Hamelin: Alkan Unlocked

W hat is left is a very simple, straight-forward and honest voice, a voice that is at the heart of the music and that listeners seem able to respond to instantly. When it comes down to it, what makes Alkan’s music so attractive to listeners is not the virtuosity of the piano writing, though that can be exciting, nor the cleverness of the construction, though that might be impressive. No, what grips listeners is the sheer passion of Alkan’s music and the strength of his musical personality.”
— Jack Gibbons, 2002.

I ’m becoming daily more and more misanthropic and misogynous: nothing worthwhile, good or useful to do; no one to devote myself to. My situation makes me horridly sad and wretched. Even musical production has lost its attraction for me for I can’t see any point or goal.”
— Charles-Valentin Alkan, letter to Ferdinand Hiller, 1861.

T he performance by Marc-André Hamelin in Kansas City last night as part of the Harriman-Jewell Series was animated and inspiring throughout. I particularly admired the Alkan ‘12 Études dans tous les tons mineurs Op. 39, Nos. 4-7’.

I n making sense of this challenging piece, I find it helpful to read Stephanie McCallum, Senior Lecturer in Keyboard at Sydney Conservatorium, University of Sydney, who gave a paper at the 2007 Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference, entitled ‘Alkan: Enigma or Schizophrenia?’

A lkan withdrew from public life at age 24, and, according to McCallum, Alkan’s subsequent correspondence (200+ letters) provides clear indications of the onset of severe mental illness. McCallum considers evidence for schizophrenia, for Asperger Syndrome, and for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder—with considerable support for the latter... compulsive washing, ritualized avoidance of touching surfaces, refusal to go out of his house, fear of contaminated food, etc.

D espite his private agonies, Alkan in his reclusive years was highly creative. He produced some of the most fantastical, large-scale and virtuosic music of all piano literature. He often displays a preference for long passages of rhythmic and textural patterns, including sequences which set up clashing dissonances. Although these things are frequent in music generally, Alkan takes them to extremes and often to unnerving [melo-]dramatic effect.

E xamples include extended passages of tremolando-like rapidly repeated notes in the left hand and wave-like rolling patterns where the pianist’s hands are like animals roaming the keyboard and the fingers are like animals’ legs—given to primal reflexive impulsions and unspeakable predatory aims.

H amelin captures the erratic, reiterative, relentless, bombastic qualities of these Etudes perfectly—reanimating the unusual personality who composed them. As an encore, Hamelin performed a jewel-like Nocturne of his own composition—a piece that itself embodies ambiguities and moment-to-moment alteration of mood, dissonances, and impromptu trajectory, not unlike the Alkan etudes.

[50-sec clip, Marc-André Hamelin, C-V Alkan, 12 Études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op. 39, No. 9, Adagio, 1.6MB MP3]

[50-sec clip, Marc-André Hamelin, C-V Alkan, 12 Études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op. 39, No. 10, Allegretto, 1.6MB MP3]

T hese are miniature worlds full of drama, excitement, color and terror!

C uriously, Alkan’s death involved a bookcase in his home, toppling over and crushing him as he was reaching for a book on a high shelf. Bad things happen, as it turns out, even to people who are delusional or paranoid.

Alkan in top hat, standing, superstitiously refusing to look at photographer