A Pianist of Uncommon Sovereignty: Marc-André Hamelin at the 92nd Street Y
In an evening of breathtaking range, Canadian virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin delivered a program that was nothing less than a tour through the entire kingdom of the modern piano
Some pianists perform a concert, while others inhabit one. On the night of February 18, 2026, Marc-André Hamelin belonged emphatically to the second category. Seated at a gleaming Steinway on the stage of the David Geffen Stage at the Kaufmann Concert Hall — the storied concert room of The 92nd Street Y — Hamelin offered not merely a recital but an act of sovereign imagination, traversing two and a half centuries of musical thought with a command so total it seemed, at moments, almost suspiciously effortless.
Interpretive Intelligence
The program itself was an act of intellectual audacity: a labyrinthine journey from Haydn's crystalline classicism to the fevered Romanticism of Rachmaninoff, with illuminating stops at Zappa, Wolpe, Oswald, and Medtner along the way. Moreover, what made the evening truly remarkable was not the range itself — formidable as it was — but the absolute consistency of interpretive intelligence and communicative warmth Hamelin brought to every bar of every work on the program.
First Half: From Enlightenment Wit to Expressionist Fire
Haydn — Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI:37
Hamelin opened with Franz Joseph Haydn's sparkling Sonata in D Major (Hob. XVI:37, 1780) — and immediately, one grasped the intelligence of the program's design. His Haydn was all wit, elegance, and affectionate command. The opening Allegro con brio unfurled with luminous clarity of voicing, every ornamental figure placed with absolute precision, every dynamic shade calibrated to perfection. The figurations were executed not with the rote fluency of the technically proficient, but with the living spontaneity of someone who clearly loves this music with his whole heart.
Marc-Andre Hamelin. Courtesy marcandrehamelin.com Cheerful and Propulsive
The central Largo e sostenuto was a master class in the expressive possibilities of restraint — his tone darkened and deepened, the aching dissonances of D minor voiced with a tenderness that made the return of the sunlit major key feel, for a suspended moment, genuinely surprising. The concluding Presto ma non troppo arrived like a gust of exuberant air, cheerful and propulsive, warm and spirited. Each movement was, in sum, fresh and performed with complete aplomb — honoring the sophistication of Haydn's oeuvre with both intellectual respect and human warmth.
Zappa — Ruth Is Sleeping: A Rock Star Meets the Second Viennese School
The transition to Frank Zappa's Ruth Is Sleeping (1993, arr. A. Askin) was, in retrospect, both startling and inevitable. Zappa, who in his final years turned his formidable creative energies from rock provocation toward concert works of genuine harmonic sophistication, left in this Synclavier-born piece a work whose language — bristling with tritones, sharp-nine chords, and tightly clustered dissonances one associates with Berg and Webern — sits unmistakably in the orbit of the Second Viennese School.
Virtuosic Interpretation
Hamelin, who champions the work on his Hyperion Records album Found Objects / Sound Objects (October 2025), performed it here in a solo transcription, with splendid results throughout. The complex harmonic architecture was navigated with a structural clarity that made the demanding seem luminous, the rhythmic energy relentless but never mechanical. This was a virtuosic interpretation of an extraordinarily challenging work, and it confirmed what the cognoscenti have long known: Hamelin's fearlessness as a programmer is matched, note for note, by his fearlessness as a performer.
Wolpe — Passacaglia: The Geometry of Exile
If Zappa brought the Second Viennese School's atmosphere into the hall, then Stefan Wolpe's Passacaglia (1933) made that relationship explicit. Wolpe composed this stark and monumental work in Jerusalem, where he had fled after becoming an early Nazi target. Built from a simple series of expanding intervals and eleven derivative rows, the entire edifice rises from this germinal material with the rigor of a cathedral constructed from a single cornerstone.
Marc-Andre Hamelin on stage at the 92Y. Photo by Edward Kliszus Color, Ritual, and Psychological Atmosphere
The contrapuntal opening was rhythmically incisive and tonally severe, carrying within it the Expressionist atmosphere of early twentieth-century German art. Furthermore, there were atonal admixtures — structures that dissolve traditional tonal gravity while retaining expressive clarity and acoustic beauty — reminiscent of the deeply personal sound-worlds of George Crumb, where atonality functions not as system but as color, ritual, and psychological atmosphere. Hamelin brought to it all the energy of a man untangling a particularly beautiful and complex knot, and the long, martial, monorhythmic final section arrived with the force of a historical reckoning.
Oswald — Tip: An Iceberg of Musical Memory
By brilliant contrast came John Oswald's Tip (2021), commissioned by Hamelin from his fellow Canadian. A kaleidoscopic mosaic of quotations from the core pianistic repertoire — woven together with wit and structural intelligence akin to the cleverly designed miniatures of Peter Schickele — the work conjures, from the briefest gestures, an entire universe of musical association. Throughout, one caught fleeting shadows of Debussy, Chopin, Satie, Beethoven, Scott Joplin, Gershwin, and Vince Guaraldi. Hamelin performed it with a natural, charming expressiveness that made the piece feel less like an intellectual exercise and more like a genuine act of affection toward the history of the keyboard, and the audience responded with a delight that bordered on astonishment.
From Romantic Twilight to Symphonic Storm
Medtner — Improvisation & Danza festiva: The Last Romantic
Following the intermission, Hamelin offered a pair of works by Nikolai Medtner — the Improvisation in B-flat Minor (Op. 31, No. 1) and the vivid Danza festiva (Op. 38, No. 3) — and in doing so paid tribute to one of music's most stubbornly magnificent figures. Medtner, the last of the great Romantic composer-pianists, held fast to that tradition deep into the twentieth century, championed throughout his career by Rachmaninoff himself.
Not Merely Velocity but Poetic Lightness
Hamelin's Medtner was ravishing. The Improvisation — a memorial to a young pianist friend — unfolded as free-flowing variations on a brooding theme, and Hamelin lavished it with a tonal warmth and singing legato that recalled the finest late-nineteenth-century Romantic tradition. The passages of lightning-fast, airy filigree — delicate, gossamer phrases requiring not merely velocity but poetic lightness — were executed with serene mastery, seeming to float above the keyboard. The Danza festiva, by contrast, was a village celebration in sound, complete with clangorous bells and athletic dancing, shot through with a scherzo-like wit that Hamelin dispatched with magisterial ease. The scherzo sections were particularly picturesque and challenging — and completely tamed.
Rachmaninoff — Étude-Tableau & Sonata No. 2: Magnificent Summits
The concert's final chapter belonged to Sergei Rachmaninoff, and it was magnificent. The Étude-Tableau in E-flat Minor (Op. 39, No. 5, 1917) arrived with unabashed passion and ferocious chromatic density. Rich in bold harmonicism, melodic power, and bravura, the work's dense textures were navigated with structural clarity that never allowed the lyricism within to be overwhelmed by the sheer mass of sound. In turns turbulent and transcendent, it seemed to bear the entire weight of a civilization on the verge of irreversible transformation.
Bravura and Intellect
Then came the Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat Minor (Op. 36, 1931 revision) — and here one must simply say: it was an experience of the kind that justifies concert-going as a way of life. The opening Allegro agitato struck the hall with devastating force. Those accented chords like hammer blows, the primary theme in the left hand's tenor register, establish its motive of descending chromatic tones with quiet inevitability. Hamelin played it with bravura and intellect, the full orchestral range of the piano's dynamic palette deployed in service of structural argument never lost beneath the sonic splendor.
L-R Sergei Rachmaninoff, by George Grantham Bain, Public Domain. Claude Debussy portrait (1908) by Otto Wegener. Public Domain. Unfettered Streams of Consciousness
The Non allegro — Lento was ravishing: pensive, luminous, transcendent, its harmonic and melodic elements hovering in the air with an almost sacred quality — a pavane, a sonic orison, music that seems to stand entirely outside of ordinary time. Unfettered streams of consciousness flowed through the movement, melodic poetry of the highest order. And then the finale — L'istesso tempo — Allegro molto — arrived with a cascade of fortissimo chords tumbling downward like a controlled avalanche, the whole extraordinary structure brought to its thunderous close in a way that felt simultaneously inevitable and almost unbearably exciting.
The audience rose immediately and entirely, their sustained ovation filling the Kaufmann with the warmth that can only be earned. Hamelin had earned it magnificently and expressed thanks with a final tribute to Debussy and his own composition, “The Music Box.”
A Portrait of the Pianist
What this recital demonstrated most powerfully was precisely the quality that makes Marc-André Hamelin singular among pianists of his generation — not merely the formidable technique (though that is extraordinary), nor the astonishing breadth of repertoire (though that too is unmatched), but the sovereign intellectual curiosity that animates everything he does.
Born in Montreal and based in the Boston area, Hamelin has assembled a discography of more than 90 albums as an exclusive artist for Hyperion Records. As a composer, he has written more than thirty works — including the Toccata on L'homme armé commissioned by the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and the Mazurka commissioned by the Library of Congress. He teaches on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music. Among his honors: seven Juno Awards, eleven Grammy nominations, the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize from Northwestern University, the Paul de Hueck Career Achievement Award from the Ontario Arts Foundation, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics' Association, Officer of the Order of Canada, Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Québec, and member of the Royal Society of Canada.
Exceptionally Interesting, Challenging, and Thoroughly Enjoyable Concert Experience
What I enjoyed most about this concert was the extraordinary range of styles and genres Hamelin performed with equal aplomb. This shows not only his artistic genius, interpretive flexibility, and broad abilities, but also provides an audience with an exceptionally interesting, challenging, and thoroughly enjoyable concert experience. To attend a Hamelin recital is to be reminded, with every passing bar, that the piano repertoire is not a canon but a cosmos — and that there exists, at its center, a musician uniquely equipped to be its guide.
A Pianist of Uncommon Sovereignty: Marc-André Hamelin at the 92nd Street Y
THE 92ND STREET Y, NEW YORK NY
David Geffen Stage at the Kaufmann Concert Hall 1395 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10128 Tel: 212-415-5500
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