{"id":124234,"date":"2026-01-07T22:10:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/124234\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T22:10:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T22:10:20","slug":"piano-virtuoso-marc-andre-hamelin-back-in-san-diego-for-heroic-brahms-dvorak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/124234\/","title":{"rendered":"Piano virtuoso Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin back in San Diego for ‘heroic’ Brahms, Dvo\u0159\u00e1k"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Promotion<\/a>The San Diego Symphony\u2019s promotion for pianist Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin. (Image courtesy of the symphony)<\/p>\n

When San Diego welcomes \u00fcber-pianist Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin<\/a>\u2019s local return on Jan. 17 and 18<\/a> for Brahms\u2019 first piano concerto with the symphony, it\u2019ll be with full knowledge of his versatility as a performer. <\/p>\n

In his five odd San Diego appearances over the past decade, the Montreal native has wowed in everything from solo recitals, concertos,and chamber concerts to a San Diego Symphony<\/a> multimedia deep-dive on Mussorgsky\u2019s Pictures at an Exhibition moderated by\u00a0 Hamelin in 2016.<\/p>\n

But versatility, impeccable technique, even unfailing musicality aren\u2019t truly what sets Hamelin apart from other first-tier pianists. For piano nerds, Hamelin\u2019s real claim to fame is his decades-long celebration of the range and variety of the keyboard repertoire. Since his first disc in 1988 \u2014 etudes and other works by the then mostly unsung Polish-American composer Leopold Godowsky \u2014 Hamelin has been championing the unjustly forgotten and the frankly never-known. <\/p>\n

After Hamelin re-discovered Godowsky that composer enjoyed a recording boomlet in the 1990s, and Hamelin went on to record even more off-radar composers like Kaikhosru Sorabji, Sophie-Carmen Eckhardt-Gramatt\u00e9, Nikolai Roslavets, Samuil Feinberg, and \u2014 freshly in the can this past November \u2014 Radam\u00e9s Gnattali.<\/p>\n

Add to these unknown names the many well-respected but nevertheless non-canonical composers that Hamelin\u2019s recorded (Medtner, Ornstein, Busoni, Reger, etc.) and Hamelin\u2019s sizable catalog of stalwarts (Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin) and Hamelin\u2019s true distinctiveness is incontrovertible.\u00a0 If not for him,\u00a0 a treasure trove of musical nuggets would linger in obscurity.<\/p>\n

Why does Hamelin bother? One reason is clearly his pharmacist father, an amateur pianist who also loved neglected repertoire. But in a recent Zoom call from Boston, Hamelin traced his excavatory mission back to natural curiosity. <\/p>\n

\u201cFrom very early on, even though I was schooled on the standard repertoire, I\u2019ve always had a tendency to look left and right, away from the center,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the more you do this, the more you realize that the piano repertoire is practically infinite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamelin is not only a rummaging hoarder of scores, some quite rare, but communicates with a global network of sleuthing comrades. One German friend\u2019s collection of rare piano music PDFs \u201chas reached, I think, over 77,000 items,\u201d Hamelin marvels. \u201cA lot of it is insignificant, forgettable, will not have stood the test of time, out of fashion, or junky or bad. But to me it\u2019s a fabulous opportunity to possibly expand my repertoire. It\u2019s a wonderful playground, full of wonder, also full of disappointments, but every so often you find a real gem.\u201d<\/p>\n

As much as he enjoys the search, Hamelin doesn\u2019t chase down these musical rabbit holes for their own sake. \u201cI have to love the music, but I have to be sure that it will be relatable by the audience. That\u2019s my prime concern, always the audience. I mean, I don\u2019t play for myself, okay?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

He plays for listeners and, on some level clearly, for the forgotten composers themselves. His main aim as a pianist \u201cshould be to say something and be as true to the composer\u2019s wish as possible. And that can be a tall order.\u201d<\/p>\n

After ninety-two recordings \u2014 the vast majority on Hyperion (\u201cthey have really built and sustained my career; it\u2019s not an exaggeration\u201d) \u2014 and eleven Grammy nominations, Hamelin can now record \u201caccording to personal preference,\u201d he admits. Perhaps no other pianist, living or dead, has recorded a greater range of under-appreciated music. <\/p>\n

But don\u2019t ask Hamelin to admire his own career achievement. \u201cI can\u2019t spend too much time in contemplation,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I have made at least a small dent as far as people\u2019s appreciation of this repertoire, I don\u2019t know what more I can do. I\u2019m more interested in forging ahead, new projects that might benefit listeners.\u201d<\/p>\n

His most recent released recording, Found Objects \/ Sound Objects, perfectly captures Hamelin\u2019s zest for the undiscovered. Of the seven featured composers, only two, Frank Zappa and John Cage, can be considered household names (depending on the household). Three \u2013 including Hamelin (his own Hexensabbat) \u2014 are by living composers, the remaining two (Stefan Wolpe\u2019s Four Studies on Basic Rows and Salvatore Martirano\u2019s Stuck on Stella) by envelope-pushing twentieth-century American composers whose music\u2019s lack of renown is belied by their quirky quality.<\/p>\n

As a composer, Hamelin has been crafting and recording his own music for decades. In 2016, he performed his Four Perspectives for cello and piano in San Diego and his piano quintet here six years later. In 2017 his Toccata on L\u2019homme arm\u00e9 was a required competition piece for all thirty contestants at the elite Van Cliburn competition \u2014 over which Hamelin presided as a jurist (\u201cthe performances were never less than very good,\u201d he recalled). \u00a0<\/p>\n

But when asked about his compositional alter ego, Hamelin flashes effacing modesty. \u201cIt will never be my main activity,\u201d he explained. \u201cI would never have the time or the desire, really, to delve into symphonic music or an opera or anything like that. I\u2019m mostly a miniaturist, because that\u2019s what\u2019s within my capability. But I still always find the feel the need to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamelin displays similar restraint when discussing the merits of his embrace of recherch\u00e9 piano repertoire. \u201cSome of my colleagues restrict themselves as far as repertoire, but I respect that because it shows focus,\u201d he said. \u201cIt shows a great desire for betterment. And maybe some of them don\u2019t learn music quite as easily as others. But that\u2019s fine, too. What really matters is what message they express.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though at 64 years Hamelin admits \u201csome things don\u2019t come quite as easily as they used\u201d\u00a0and \u201cthere\u2019s some repertoire that I\u2019m just not willing to do anymore,\u201d his passion for music and his instrument are still ravenous. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s become more and more apparent to me over the years that a piano, this black and white instrument, can produce every color under the sun and can reproduce, at least ideally, any adjective in the dictionary,\u201d he said. \u201cThough it\u2019s referred to sometimes as a percussion instrument, to me it\u2019s perfectly capable of rivaling an orchestra as far as expressive possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a vehicle for expressive range, the Brahms\u2019 piano concerto in D minor \u2014 Hamelin\u2019s subject along with Dvo\u0159\u00e1k\u2019s Seventh Symphony in a \u201cheroic monuments\u201d program Jan. 17 and 18 \u2014 has few peers, from the stormy drama of its first movement and the prayer-like calm of the second to the muscular defiance of its concluding Rondo: Allegro non troppo. <\/p>\n

Reminded that he once named Brahms\u2019 concertos as among the handful of pieces he plays best, Hamelin demurs: \u201cWell, I felt that certainly about the second concerto, which I\u2019ve been playing for almost 40 years. The first concerto I\u2019ve only been playing for about maybe 10 or 12 years, but it feels settled in my repertoire, and it\u2019s grown to the stage where I can consider it\u201d \u2014 he pauses for effect \u2014 \u201ca friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ NEXT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Diego Symphony\u2019s promotion for pianist Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin. (Image courtesy of the symphony) When San Diego welcomes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64860,7974,64861,64862,64863,34604,74,76,75,25937],"class_list":{"0":"post-124234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-brahms","9":"tag-classical-music","10":"tag-dvorak","11":"tag-heroic-monuments","12":"tag-marc-andre-hamelin","13":"tag-piano","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-san-diego-headlines","16":"tag-san-diego-news","17":"tag-san-diego-symphony"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}