Marc-Andre Hamelin - Villa-Lobos: Piano Music

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Music reviews of Villa-Lobos: Piano Music

Music Review: Absolute Redemption.
Rating: 5 Stars

Hamelin's pianism is ravishing and utterly fascinating. He has a gorgeous, illuminating, and tremendously wide spectrum of brilliant but clean dynamic expression, a singing color, an impeccable sense of architecture and multi-voiced structure, and a prodigious ability that allows him to effortlessly sail through even the most mentally complex and technically murderous passages and daunting conundrums with panache and brio, immaculately, and at an even pace. Often ardent, elegant, and robust, Hamelin is always dexterous, avoiding over-indulgence.

Hamelin's gift for unhindered fluidity, not allowing technical limitations to demand tempos, and his attention to clarity and delineation make(s) him the ideal interpreter of strong, clearly chiseled structures, but, as if taking this for granted, in most of his playing, I hear a nonchalant disregard for the resolution of difficulties. A marvelous and enviable talent, yes, but everything under his fingers is controlled, too controlled, leaving out a lot of the potential melancholy, maelstrom, mysticism, inner-torment, poetry, pain, and enigmatic characteristic-qualities. Where disorder and struggle may be the overall purpose, Hamelin's lack of variation in touch and tone can make him sound univocal. He fails to dig beneath the notes. Everything is lightweight and attenuated rather than high-voltage, gargantuan, or menacing. Placing too great an emphasis on a constant and even texture and not enough emphasis on the involvement with impetuous interior qualities of shaping and voicing, and never igniting bravura, many pieces fall flat.

Hamelin's pursuit to provide his listener with understanding is and can be good, but, with some composers, they actually thrive incoherence, they want wrong notes, they want their piece to be unplayable. In a similar way to how happiness is a way of travel, not a destination, it is the journey that matters most, not the eventual or possible arrival. In order for certain things to be expressed, certain things have to be done, or made so they cannot be done, put just beyond the grasp of the pianist. Such things are necessary in order to educate him, to keep him involved, and to make him grow ever more impassioned. This is fundamental to the very essence and Soul of the music, and might also serve as the cause for its being neglected, forgotten, and virtually unknown in the first place. Here enters the inevitable `big' question. Should music be left as dead, unperformed and unheard if it is not going to be done full justice? Of course not. If it is ever to be realized, perfection will owe itself to the very existence of past imperfection.

This recital-disc is a collection of the most important solo piano works of the non-pianist Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), a man of raging passion, who, although claiming that his music was 'the fruit of an immense, ardent and generous land' is often criticized for extravagance and formlessness.

The disc's first selection, As Três Marias, The Three Marias, represents in three miniatures, in a very interesting, melodic, and delightful way, the three belts in the Belt of the constellation Orion. No mere child's-play are the second and third selections of the disc, A Prole do Bebê, The Baby's Family: the two suites are an adult's recollection of childhood, a reflection on the magical family-like world composed of a child's enchanting possessions. Audacious, seductive, teasing, astringent, and percussive, this music can be similar to Debussy in style, but the coloring, folk-like qualities, and rhythms are purely Latin American. The last selection and gem of this disc is Rudepoêma, Savage Poem, written for and dedicated as a musical portrait to Artur Rubinstein, also the dedicatee of a similar work by Stravinsky, the Three Movements from Petrushka - a difficult and remarkable virtuoso masterpiece, an exuberant barnstorming carnival, a larger than life tour de force, simultaneously driving, violent, and propulsive. Though this is definitely an improvement, I cannot say I prefer this Rudepoêma to his previous recording, each is unique, and both are quite good. I can say, however, that on this disc, everything works out just right, taking me closer to the heart of Villa-Lobos than I have ever known possible. Hamelin shows himself to be a true wizard, giving harrowingly eloquent, memorable, definitive, and timeless performances.

Description of Villa-Lobos: Piano Music

Classical CDs

• Music > Styles
• Latin Music