Memory and timelessness: Marc-André Hamelin’s poetic piano wizardry at the QEH

The great pianist-pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus reportedly asked his disciples for: “steel fingers, a cool head, and a warm heart”; some of his pupils ruefully added “plus a litre of blood”. Add to all that a deadpan facial expression and you have something like the phenomenon of Marc-André Hamelin.

There is something almost Buster Keatonesque about the Canadian’s self-effacing demeanour. The analogy also applies to Hamelin’s combination of aching poetry and daredevil virtuosity. For both men, their inscrutable features only reinforce the impression of physical wizardry. Hamelin’s two-hour recital at the Queen Elisabeth Hall characteristically offered some of the most musically and technically complex works of the repertoire, from Beethoven’s Hammerklavier to Godowsky at his most florid. (Not to be outdone, his California recital a mere 48 hours later paired the Hammerklavier with Ravel’s famously über-virtuoso Gaspard de la nuit).

By Hamelin’s standards it took him a minute or two to settle into the first movement of the Beethoven. Having cleverly negotiated the notorious opening leaps with right-over-left hand-crossing, he sacrificed a fraction of clarity at the end of some phrases, presumably in order to keep as close as possible to Beethoven’s supersonic metronome mark. Still, the (very few) skated-over notes only served to add to the excitement. Similarly, the bright but rather pingy treble of the chosen Yamaha instrument was not hard to adjust to as Hamelin guided us through the labyrinthine architecture towards the sublime central slow movement.

This was not an Adagio sostenuto for fans of sobbing self-indulgence. It was far more moving and powerful than that; a solemn dedication to music at its most sublime, to the illusion of time standing still. With scarcely a pause, the finale’s introduction stole in with improvisatory wonder. As for the ferocious fugue, it could hardly have been more daring. Hamelin allowed its near-chaos to unfurl with terrifying determination until the final emergence of order hit us with the full force of its redemptive wisdom, so Shakespearean a progression that it felt more Tempest-like than Beethoven’s so-called Tempest Sonata.

Inevitably, Liszt’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Adelaide then felt musically and dramatically rather shallow, even though Hamelin squeezed as much lyricism and heart out of it as possible. Conceptually, it certainly fitted the theme of memory, paving the way for Medtner’s Sonata Reminiscenza. Medtner is, to say the least, an acquired taste. But with a musician-storyteller of the exalted calibre of Hamelin, capable of negotiating the dense textures without resorting to easy pathos or sentimentality, he can be irresistibly delicious. This was like opening a photo album that has been gathering dust and contains memories of memories: sepia-tinted images frozen in time. With each return, the hauntingly nostalgic opening theme became more heartbreaking, until it was time to quietly close the album and put it back on the shelf.

That done, Hamelin cut loose with Godowsky’s homage to Johann Strauss’s Wine, Women and Song, a cheerful swashbuckling display of pianistic fireworks – like Ravel’s La Valse on steroids and without its hints of impending doom. Optimistically (or could it be ironically?) Godowsky called the piece “symphonic metamorphoses”; be that as it may, Hamelin’s performance was a tour de force of quasi-orchestral sonorities.

The audience’s standing ovation was rewarded with two charming encores: CPE Bach’s by turns teasing and eruptive Rondo in C minor, followed by Hamelin’s own student piece, Music Box: wit layered here with mystery, and movingly in tune with the recital’s unstated theme of memory and suspended time.