Thursday, August 2, 2007

Hamelin in Gotham

Pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin's International Keyboard Institute & Festival performance on Saturday was well attended. Just ask Steve Smith, who reviewed the performance for The New York Times:



"The line of patrons waiting to hear him in the Mannes Concert Hall on Saturday extended down a staircase, across the lobby and through a locker-lined hallway."

As for the music itself, there was this:



"Sonata in a State of Jazz,” composed by the French pianist Alexis Weissenberg in 1982, offered formidable Cubist allusions to popular forms. A tartly dissonant tango in three-quarter time was punctuated with glimmers of nostalgic melody; a spiky Charleston emphasized sharp-edged rhythms. Dense harmonies in a blues-inspired movement suggested a young Schoenberg brooding over the keys in an after-hours Harlem joint, while complex lines in the closing samba section swayed like a drunken mathematician."  Read all of Festival's King of Keys Kicks Off With Haydn.

Good writing and apparently fine piano playing. Does it make you wish you had been there? Well on January 26 Bostonians can hear Mr. Hamelin a little closer to home. His performance will not include the locker-lined hallway, but it will feature the same fine pianist.



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