Work: Variations on a theme by Paganini

Anyone who knows the name Marc-André Hamelin will know him foremost for his technique. It is, to use a crude expression, what his brand is built upon.

The virtuoso pianist Marc-André Hamelin played a program of works by Bach, Fauré, Ravel and Rachmaninov, bracketed by his own Variations on a theme by Paganini. Last March in Toronto, when Hamelin snuck this piece into the program as an encore, I wrote that it was “ten minutes of the most fun you’ll ever have crowding around a piano at the end of party.