Lest his classical-sounding titles mislead, Nikolai Kapustin's piano music is little more than virtuosic cocktail jazz, and it should not be taken as anything more advanced or serious. This 2004 disc of solo piano works may appeal to a small crossover audience, but the music's surface glitter and easy-to-absorb tunes are not enough to mask its ...
Anyone familiar with the unfailing digits and seemingly inexhaustible energy of Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin would find the very prospect of his recording Charles-Valentin Alkan's giga-difficult Concerto for solo piano as a natural match of pianist and piece. This 50-minute mega-monstrosity -- the first movement alone lasts nearly a half an ...
Magnificently muscular, lovingly lyrical, and deeply joyful, Marc-André Hamelin's 2006 recording of Brahms' Second Piano Concerto with Andrew Litton directing the Dallas Symphony Orchestra is a welcome addition to the work's discography. While there have been other muscular performances -- one thinks of Gilels and Richter's -- and other lyrical ...
Among pianists, Paul Dukas' Sonata in E flat minor has acquired a singular reputation, not only because it requires considerable technique and physical stamina to pull off, but also because it is one of the least performed of the great late Romantic keyboard works. By most standards, this imposing piano sonata should have enjoyed much more acclaim ...
The richly chromatic harmonies and vaporous melodic shapes in Jay Reise's piano music may well bring Alexander Scriabin to mind, but so, too, do the strikingly complex cross-rhythms and frenzied passage work on display in the Sonata Rhythmikosmos (1993, revised 2001) and the Pictures (6) from The Devil in the Flesh (1998-2001). Reise could not ...
The career of Quebec pianist Marc-André Hamelin has prospered partly because it has followed an unusual arc: Hamelin began with an attention-getting specialty, the extreme virtuoso repertory of the late nineteenth century, and has expanded into more familiar piano works. His selection of Haydn sonatas is a revelation, finding a real keyboardist's ...
This 2004 Hyperion recording is actually Marc-André Hamelin's second traversal through Ives' Concord Sonata; his initial venture being among the first of his commercial recordings, made back in 1988 for New World Records. Back in the days of LPs, you were lucky to get two new "Concords" in the course of a decade; Hamelin's was at least the third ...
Is there really another volume in Hyperion's series The Romantic Piano Concerto? Are there really any more unrecorded Romantic piano concertos? Apparently. Here are Xaver Scharwenka's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor and Anton Rubinstein's Piano Concerto No. 4. But that's not the amazing thing. The amazing thing is that Scharwenka's First and ...
Marc-André Hamelin takes on the watercolor pictures of Albéniz's Spain on this two-disc set with the expected luminous results. Smaller pieces that are in the same vein complement Albéniz's massive suite Iberia here. The accompanying notes talk about the "reflective" nature of most of Iberia, but while Hamelin does bring out the meditative aspects ...
Can't get enough of that Russian stuff? Got to have more of that late-Romantic Rachmaninov? Need to know more than that arch-sensualist Scriabin? Then Nikolay Medtner is your man, Marc-André Hamelin is your pianist, and this disc (Forgotten Melodies) is your recording. Big-hearted themes? Medtner's got them -- along with sweet harmonies, lush ...
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