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Topher Levin: You have a lovely program for your Kansas City appearance next month. With sonatas by Berg and Liszt, a selection of Debussy preludes, and several of your own etudes, it’s an interesting mix of literature. How did you arrive at choosing this set of pieces for your Kansas City program?

Marc-André Hamelin: Well this is one of the programs that I’ve been offering for the last year, so I’ve done it quite a few times... I think the centerpiece is really the Liszt Sonata. It was very, very interesting to preface it with the Berg, which is in the same key, but which uses B minor in a totally different way. And, well, what can I say about the Liszt Sonata that hasn’t been said already? It’s a national monument. I’m hoping those that know it well, might get something [new] from what I do with it. Like everybody else who plays it, I’m trying to get to the truth. [Laughs.] ... The moment I discovered [Debussy’s] Second Book of Preludes was almost a turning point for me. I had never been that enamored of Debussy before, and I tried to give a fresh look to the Second Book of Preludes. I realized all that I’d been missing all these years. It’s tremendous music... I’m fascinated also by the fact that Debussy rarely wants the piano to sound like just a piano. There was always something else he wanted the piano to emulate, which makes learning and playing these pieces a fascinating pursuit.  

TL: Well, as psyched as I am to hear Alban Berg’s Sonata played here in Kansas City, I must say I’m also quite excited you’ll be playing some of your own work. Your Twelve Etudes are still fairly hot off the presses...

MAH: Yes! They came out last year.

TL: Can you talk about how your Etude project came about?

MAH: I sort of eased into it. I wrote a Prelude and Fugue [the last of the set] without thinking it would be part of a collection. Then gradually the idea came, 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 the cycle didn’t really take shape until just a little while ago... When I had about nine 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.  

TL: How long was it since that contact and the cycle’s publication?

MAH: Exactly three years. [Laughs.] Which tells you something about my rate of work.

TL: What has the experience of performing your own works been like for you?

MAH: Well, it’s a lot of work. [Laughs.] Some of them are not easy, I’ll say euphemistically, and some of them are downright horrifying, even for me. [Laughs.]

TL: Speaking of difficult literature, from what I could find when I checked recently, your two-disc recording of Godowsky’s transcriptions of the Chopin Etudes released back in 2000, still puts you in a rather exclusive club. I believe only Boris Berezovsky and Carlo Grante have also attempted recording the whole set. Can you talk about how your project of those recordings came about and how you prepared yourself for such a massive undertaking?

MAH: Well, it had been a wish of mine for many, many years actually, at least 15 years before. But back then, I wasn’t recording. I can honestly say I had been acquainted with them ever since I was seven or eight years old, because my father was very interested in them. They had been out-of-print for a number of years and he got a set as soon as it became available again, I believe that was 1969. I remember sitting down with him and we were just turning the pages one by one of these five volumes. Our eyes were just bugging out, we both knew the Chopin Etudes, but this was really a super, magnified take on them... So that’s where the fascination at least had its beginnings. But, of course back then, I couldn’t possibly know how they sounded. My father, as a good amateur pianist, tried out a few and he started working on some, but most of them were beyond him. It wasn’t until we heard a recording sometime later. Jorge Bolet came out with some [and] there were also the recordings of David Saperton, which allowed us to hear a few, but it wasn’t until I had the courage to work on these myself that I was able to hear most of them. I [have] played a number of them in concert, but I have to say maybe a third to a half of them I only learned for the recording and I haven’t played [those] in public.

TL: What can we expect next from Marc-André Hamelin? You’ve been such a champion of lesser-known literature. Any recently discovered composers or pieces you’re hoping to record or present in concert that you’d be willing to talk about?

MAH: There’s a couple of names that I’m starting to investigate but I don’t want to talk about it, because I’m not sure the results would be good enough [for a full project]… But, what I can tell you is the next recording is going to be—well, you know I have two collections of Haydn sonatas that are out already—and there is going to be a third one. I would assume it would come out sometime this spring, but I’m not exactly sure.

TL: You’re playing several of the Haydn sonatas in your rep this season, yes?

MAH: Yes. They are a joy. Pure joy.

TL: They are. It’s another known, yet unappreciated composer. The pieces have great personality.

MAH: Reading these, it’s like opening one great Christmas package after another. You can’t believe that there is so much richness, and so much joy and fulfillment in these [sonatas]. It’s just an incredible experience.

Marc-André Hamelin performs as part of the Harriman-Jewell Series, Saturday, October 15 at the Folly Theater. For tickets, call 816-415-5025 or visit http://hjseries.org

Top Photo: Marc-André Hamelin (Photo by Fran Kaufman)

By Topher Levin

Classical Editor and Contributor

Christopher (Topher) Levin is a composer, pianist, music theorist, and music blogger based in Kansas City, MO. His compositions have been performed at music festivals across the US and in Europe. He has spent two summers in Paris, France studying music at the Ecole Normale de Musique through the EAMA program. His trio for clarinet, piano, and percussion is published in the SCI Journal of Scores.

Topher holds degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (M.M.) in music theory and (M.M.) in composition and from James Madison University in Virginia (B.M.) in composition. Primary composition teachers have included John S. Hilliard, Paul Rudy, Zhou Long, James Mobberley, Chen Yi, Claude Baker, Narcis Bonet, Michel Merlet, and João Pedro Oliveira. His piano teachers have included Patricia Brady and Karen Kushner. Topher maintains a piano studio of 22 students.

Having recently completed a Master's thesis on the beautiful complexities of Chinary Ung's trio, Spiral I, Topher turned his writing attention to the more informal blogging medium. He has taken to it quite well, sharing posts on strange and wonderful music and art found across the web with a modest but growing number of blog followers. He looks forward to writing for KCM and sharing with its readers the stories of all the amazing musicians performing in Kansas City.

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