Alkan’s Concerto for solo piano (a/k/a movements eight, nine, and ten of the composer’s Twelve Etudes in the Minor Keys Op. 39) has long been a major staple of Marc-André Hamelin’s concert repertoire. His early 1990s recording for Music and Arts set reference standards for technical finesse, sustaining power, and stylish elegance. If anything, his highly anticipated Hyperion remake, recorded in February 2006, is even better. For starters, the slightly distant yet lustrous, detailed sonics ideally suit the music’s orchestral impact and capture the full scope of Hamelin’s multi-leveled virtuosity. More importantly, the pianist’s interpretation has become internalized to the point where no boundaries exist between composer and performer.
Hamelin now characterizes the sprawling first movement’s “tutti/solo” contrasts and various themes with a wider expressive palette and more variety of articulation. He creates a suppler, more menacing atmosphere in the polonaise finale as he tosses off the murderous runs, arpeggios, and sundry figurations with all of the tone color and rhythmic acuity we associate with Josef Hofmann in his prime. And under Hamelin’s watch, it’s easy to take the first movement’s unsplintered fast moving chords or impeccably executed repeated-note passages for granted.
Perhaps the central Adagio best demonstrates Hamelin’s interpretive evolution. The right-hand cantabiles take on a longer lined fluidity and flexibility and seem to be less chained to the lulling left-hand accompaniments. A good example of this occurs toward the movement’s end (about the nine and a half minute mark), where Hamelin cogently shapes the low-register arpeggiated figure against the disembodied soprano line. Furthermore, the sudden “funeral march” interpolations are more muted and less jarring now, and appropriately so.
Whereas the Music and Arts release contained the Concerto alone, Hyperion includes generous filler in the form of the Troisième recueil de chants, a suite of six character pieces. Their unpretentious melodic charm evokes Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, although more than a few harmonic quirks betray Alkan’s fingerprints. I’m thinking of the Barcarolle’s sly shifts between major and minor mode, tellingly underscored in Hamelin’s delicate, introspective reading. Jeremy Nicholas’ knowledgeable, informative, and often witty booklet notes also do Alkan proud. No piano lover should miss this absolutely transcendent, watershed release. [9/13/2007]
