Marc-André Hamelin on Found Objects/Sound Objects

Even for Marc-André Hamelin, his new piano album Found Objects/Sound Objects is unusually adventurous. The Canadian pianist has enjoyed a thirty-year recorded relationship with Hyperion, along the way reviving the music of Medtner, Alkan and Godowsky while introducing us to some of his own compositions. Now, with a self-curated album of contemporary piano music, he encounters Frank Zappa, John Cage and Stefan Wolpe among several others in a bold exploration of modern piano writing. Presto have the joy of half an hour online to Boston to talk with him about it.

He begins, however, with a complimentary word for the album in physical form. “I have always liked physical product; I've been collecting it since I was in a young teenager – and I like objects! I want the whole package, with booklet notes and artwork.” Distinctive and complementary presentation has consistently been a calling card of Hyperion, with whom Hamelin has recorded since his first album – concertos by Alkan and Henselt – in 1994. “Ted Perry definitely had a vision, and I have to applaud him posthumously for that, and also Simon Perry for carrying the torch, and Universal after the takeover – I’m very happy about that.”

Was Found Objects/Sound Objects an album of pieces Hamelin felt he had to record? “It has congealed over the last couple of years, and it was actually recorded quite a while before release, in February 2024.” While it is an unusual programme, there is a natural musical thread running through the album. “That probably has more to do with the order of the repertoire within the album”, he says, “because originally the selection was different. I really wanted to include Yehudi Wyner’s piece, but to incorporate that we had to have a favourite piece of mine, the Stockhausen ‘Piano Piece No. 9’, booted out, so the selection wasn’t always how it ended up.”

He elaborates on Wyner’s piece, Refrain, notable for its highly expressive discourse. “It’s a very individual kind of language, I don't know of anything else like it. It's completely intuitive but also borne out of a great knowledge of the literature of musical traditions. It's a very interesting and very personal distillation of 20th century, quasi-atonal parlance.”

The Frank Zappa piece Ruth is sleeping is a worthy contribution from a composer deeply respected by Boulez. “As I said in the notes, it is the only piano piece he’s left us, other than the very short ‘Piano Introduction to a Little House I Used to Live In’, which is just three pages and relatively inconsequential. Ruth is sleeping leaves much more of an impression, and for someone who likes Frank Zappa as much as I do, I really wanted to bring attention to it.”

He keenly recalls his introduction to Zappa’s music. “In 1979 was introduced to a twenty-minute piece called The Adventures of Greggery Peccary, on an album called Studio Tan. I’ve never been the same since! It's very cartoonish, and the story is ridiculous and childish, but it's what he does with it, the constant, musical portrayal and illustration behind the narrative, which is really fascinating. The musical language he uses is very refined. I've seen the score and it's clear that he used to the fullest whatever he absorbed from people like Varèse, Stravinsky and Webern, all people that he idolised. What he lacked in the awareness of a control of global form or architecture, he more than made up for with all kinds of interesting detail. He was more episodic as a composer than architectural, but still it speaks, and very often packs a punch.”

Meanwhile John Cage’s The Perilous Night is recognition of a composer whose originality Hamelin truly appreciates. “He was a rather incredible creator. Schoenberg said of him that he was more of an inventor than an actual composer, and to a certain extent that is true, because he is behind a lot of very novel compositional techniques, not the least of which is the prepared piano. which was invented purely out of necessity. I have to applaud that, because what he ended up with is exactly what he needed at the time. When he wrote his first prepared piano piece it was really a percussion ensemble under the control of a single player, because of a lack of space in the little theatre for which he had had to write this choreography. This piece provided me with my first experience in playing prepared piano, and I have to say, I really love it.”

Found Objects/Sound Objects closes with a Hamelin original, the Hexensabbat appearing to revisit the tradition of operatic paraphrasing as practised to great effect by Romantic composers such as Liszt. “It's very hard to talk about”, concedes Hamelin, “because I'm not sure what the influences are, if any. I did use the ‘Dies Irae’ chant at the end, and the piece is not that far removed from the last section of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, but still, I hope it manages to be its own thing. I am working to have it published, and I hope a few pianists take it on board, though I do have this reputation for writing unplayable things! Some of the pieces I wrote at the beginning, such as the set of 12 Études that came out about fifteen years ago, are very, very demanding, but I think my piano writing has become much more reasonable. The Hexensabbat is no more difficult than Prokofiev or Bartók’s pianistic language, but is just less familiar. I’ll always be saddled with the unplayable thing, even if I start writing things on the level of Clementi sonatinas or just chorales in whole notes! I’m resigned to that.”

Yet Hamelin, in spite of his technical feats of accomplishment and endurance, never makes his recordings hard work, communicating their musicality to audiences and listeners at all times. “I believe very much in presenting the music itself and smoothing out as many of the rough edges as I can”, he says, “for a pure musical experience. I, on the stage, shouldn't matter. Whatever sound waves come out of the piano, that's really what matters – not my physical relationship with the instrument. I'm perfectly aware that a lot of people, understandably, watch any pianist, and their first thought is, “I wish I could do that!” It’s a very natural impulse, but at the same time I want the pure music to come out.”

In spite of his massive discography, Hamelin has further repertoire plans, one of which is set to focus on the music of Mieczysław Weinberg. “That's a long-range project”, he says. “I do want to all of the seven piano sonatas, but I'm taking my time because I really want it to count. I am fascinated by his compositional voice, which I discovered relatively recently. I know there was a big Weinberg boom, maybe twenty years ago, but I was completely unaware of it and came to Weinberg on my own. I came across a couple of scores of the sonatas when I was in Europe, and started reading them relatively recently, and the music really speaks to me.”

He praises Hyperion for the free rein they have given him to construct such an impressive and varied discography, running back to another late-1990s odyssey. “One of the earliest projects I did with them was when they asked me to do the complete Scriabin sonatas. I really couldn’t believe my ears when I got the call, it was a tremendous vote of confidence. I was thirty-three at the time, I think – and I still can't believe it. But I delivered it as much as I as well as I could. I delivered as well as I could, because it was a tremendous responsibility with a lack of complete recordings at the time.”

Other composers Hamelin has helped to bring in from the cold, as it were, are Medtner and Busoni, with substantial anthologies of their piano works for the label. “I really took my time with the Medtner, and there was a lot of love there. Once you take the extra step to enter Medtner's world, which is not be a very easy world to enter, because he demands quite a lot of the listener - but once you're in, the rewards are endless. He is not as outwardly generous as someone like Rachmaninoff, for example, but once you get to know him, you can't get rid of him! The recording came out in 1999, but to this day people tell me that it's made a difference.”

Remarkably, the relationship with Hyperion is still a work in progress, for as well as Weinberg, other repertoire opportunities are opening up. “I am learning the Schubert G major sonata at this very moment, and I've occupied myself with Schubert much more in recent years. I'm invited to the Schubertiade every year in Austria, and that's been a major blessing, allowing me to discover and be intimate with his language. I'm sorry that I came to it relatively late in life, but maybe it was the perfect time.”

Composing, for Hamelin, remains his second major discipline. “The impulse to do it has somewhat abated recently”, he says, “but when I get a commission, I try to fulfil it. I really consider myself a pianist who happens to compose, certainly not the other way around, because my primary purpose will always be to translate the composer’s wishes as well as I can and share them with the public.”

Chamber music remains a joy, and as we speak Hamelin is about to fulfil an engagement to perform the Franck Piano Quintet in Philadelphia with the Juilliard Quartet. “I have even written my own Piano Quintet”, he reveals, “which will eventually get recorded. I enjoy chamber music more and more, and when you have the privilege of working with the Takács or Dover Quartet, it is fantastic – I just love the feeling of this kind of collaboration.”

All of which falls in with a recent observation of Hamelin’s, that the piano – even as a black and white instrument – has infinite reserves of colour, that are continuing to be explored. “I don't keep up with contemporary music as well as I could – or should – but I can fully believe that. Ultimately, what's important is what is being expressed, and not necessarily the way it's being expressed. One can easily fall into gimmicks, which for me would be classified as a distraction.”

Will he be taking much time off over the Christmas/New Year period? “The date with the Juilliard Quartet in Philadelphia is my only concert in December, because as we know, there's not much work for pianists in December! It’s nice to have an extended time with my family, and with my step grandson and their new puppy. I’m glad to be able to be of assistance. It is still a great opportunity to work. I never really stop working or take breaks from practising. because I just need contact with the instrument. As you get older, you don't learn quite as efficiently as you used to, or at least I don't. I need to spend more time assimilating music, for as you know our life spans are ridiculously short. As you get older, you want to make the most of it!”