Often
portrayed as one of the leading klaviertigers
of our day, a musician of nonchalantly
unflappable brilliance and superhuman
technical security, Hamelin’s sensitivity
is apt to be overlooked. Well then,
let’s start here. Here’s an Iberia rich
in poetic response, rich in colour and
incident; not short on wit or quick
humour either. It’s played with all
the sweep and clarity we have come to
expect from Hamelin and is illuminated
with his special brand of architectural
understanding.
One could instance
Evocación with its languorous
Francophile shimmer, splendidly weighted,
a touch aloof; quite relaxed as well
and slow-ish. His great gift here is
the sense of weightlessness he conveys
through the most acute arm weight and
touch. Invariably comparisons come from
de Larrocha and her multiple recordings
of Iberia. Her playing here is that
much more insistent, more tactile –
and more animated. In El Puerto he’s
a touch quicker than she is; his sound
is more cushioned as well, not as hard,
and his dynamics register more equably,
as does his subtle rubati. Whether you
will prefer his more temperate view
is a matter of taste; I do like the
visceral de Larrocha imagination, which
is never afraid to embrace the brittle
and the transient – qualities that apply
equally in El Corpus en Sevilla.
If one responds to her greater sense
of the theatrical and flourish you will
find her more immediate here, though
his rhythm is buoyant. Book II reflects
the same dichotomies in performance
when it comes to touch though not always
tempo. De Larrocha is generally more
direct, maybe not as detailed textually
(as in Almería) as Hamelin,
whose playing can sound just a mite
perfumed when measured against her relative
gauntness in forte passages.
In El Albaicín
she is imposing, grand, imperial,
and rather drier than Hamelin. And there’s
really very little between them in those
lustrous right hand roulades, though
the sound Hamelin has been accorded
is very much warmer than in any of de
Larrocha’s recordings. In El polo
he evinces tremendous amplitude and
style; in comparison de Larrocha tends
to be more vertical and to go in for
less expressive shading and colouration
though there’s still plenty of teeming
life from both pianists. We got a mollifying
Lavapiés from Hamelin;
rhythms are smoother than the competition,
less biting and less austere; he wears
lighter colours than de Larrocha’s darker
garbed performance. He’s a touch impatient
in Málaga but uses rubati
with distinction; colour and tonal shading
are everywhere in evidence and a powerfully
propulsive sense too in the left hand.
In Jerez we find different interpretative
viewpoints with Hamelin taking a decidedly
more brooding line with the music. And
in the concluding Eritaña
we find their playing once more
takes a divided path between relatively
lush vegetation – Hamelin – and more
prickly gorse, de Larrocha. She uses
less pedal, is crisper in articulation,
drier in sound, and can force through
fortes sometimes. He’s clearly more
romanticised and his technique is seldom
at all compromised, as hers occasionally
can be, by the gargantuan demands that
this music makes. So these are two very
differing, complementary Iberia performances
representing differing traditions and
lineage. For a romanticised and relatively
brittle-free traversal Hamelin’s is
mightily impressive - textually warm,
burnished and brilliantly played. It’s
not the only way of performing Iberia
– but it’s a powerfully convincing way.
This is a two-disc
set and so Hamelin gives us more Albéniz.
The most remarkable is the 1897 La
vega which opens with – and sustains
– a rapt, devastating simplicity over
the span of its entire sixteen-minute
length, interspersed as it is with a
powerful rhythmic charge. This is magical
musicianship. Hamelin shows his droll
side in Yvonne en visite! with
is naughty evocation of a stumbling
pianist and he’s every bit as evocative
and colour drenched in Espana: Souvenirs
as he proved to be in Iberia itself.
A final pleasure; William Bolcom’s completion
of Navarra - which is more complex
than the usually encountered Séverac
edition.
Splendid notes and,
as I’ve indicated, warm recorded sound
complete an auspicious and very welcome
disc.
Jonathan Woolf
Marc-André Hamelin (piano) 
