Chopin - Piano Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3 - Hyperion: CDA67706 - CD or download

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Hamelin builds the Second Sonata… unerringly, producing a poetic and passionate performance that is finally carried off on a spectral wind. Hamelin… opens with an exquisitely textured Berceuse.... — BBC Music Magazine, January 2009, 5 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 5th Jan 2009
Catalogue No: CDA67706
Label: Hyperion
Length: 76 minutes

Presto Recording of the Week

12th January 2009
Gramophone Magazine

February 2009

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Chopin: Berceuse in D flat major, Op. 57

Work length4:32

$1.10

$1.50

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 35 'Marche funèbre'

Work length21:48

$4.40

$6.00

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

I. Grave – Doppio movimento

Track length6:51

$1.10

$1.50

II. Scherzo

Track length5:48

$1.10

$1.50

III. Marche funèbre

Track length7:25

$1.10

$1.50

IV. Presto

Track length1:44

$1.10

$1.50

Chopin: Nocturne No. 7 in C sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 1

Work length5:20

$1.10

$1.50

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

Chopin: Nocturne No. 8 in D flat major, Op. 27 No. 2

Work length5:53

$1.10

$1.50

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

Chopin: Barcarolle in F sharp major, Op. 60

Work length8:47

$1.10

$1.50

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58

Work length30:12

$4.40

$6.00

Marc-André Hamelin (piano)

I. Allegro maestoso

Track length12:47

$1.10

$1.50

II. Scherzo: Molto vivace

Track length2:41

$1.10

$1.50

III. Largo

Track length9:43

$1.10

$1.50

IV. Finale: Presto non tanto

Track length5:01

$1.10

$1.50

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Recording of the Week, Hamelin proves his real class with Chopin

12th January 2009

The French-Canadian virtuoso ‘demonstrates that he really is a great musician as well as a phenomenal pianist’ in an all-Chopin programme centring on the Second and Third Piano Sonatas.

Recent discs from Marc-André Hamelin have concentrated on music which is obscure, under-recorded or virtually unplayable. However in this latest recording he turns his attention to two mainstays of the Romantic repertoire: Chopin’s Piano Sonatas Nos 2 and 3. The results are simply staggering: playing of matchless brilliance and consummate artistry, stunningly recorded. As a recent critic of Hamelin’s live performance of the B minor sonata remarked, ‘Hamelin starts where most other pianists leave off … such was his control that frequently it seemed as though an extra dimension were being added, the music’s teeming internal life clarified by his ability to voice the inner parts’.

The disc is completed by some of Chopin’s greatest single-movement works; the contrasting two Nocturnes of Op 27, the extraordinarily colouristic Berceuse Op 57 and the monumental Barcarolle in F sharp major. We think this is one of the most authoritative and important Chopin discs to have appeared in recent years—an unmissable release.

Reviews

January 2009

Hamelin builds the Second Sonata… unerringly, producing a poetic and passionate performance that is finally carried off on a spectral wind. Hamelin… opens with an exquisitely textured Berceuse. He finds all the richness of the Barcarollem and responds fully to Chopin's melodic impulse in the two Op. 27 Nocturnes. ...hugely satisfying Chopin recital.

February 2009

Listen to the last movement: this is indeed a fine example of supreme technical skill at the service of musical poetry.

2010

This is a disc that takes you by stealth. Not simply because it opens almost unassumingly, with a finely wrought Berceuse, but because it was only after several listenings that one realises just how good it is. This is Hamelin's second recording of the Second Sonata and it shows how much Hamelin's pianism has developed during the intervening time.
Hamelin's playing is refreshingly free from the 'inverted comma' school of profundity, and he lets the music speak through him most eloquently; he doesn't get carried away with the subtext of the Second's Funeral March, keeping it flowing (with desynchronisation of the hands subtly done) and all the more effective as a result. In the slow movement of the Third he finds time to dream without ever becoming portentous, and is every bit the equal of Nelson Freire, whose Chopin sonatas have rightly won considerable praise. Predictably, Hamelin is wonderful in such things as the Scherzo of the Third and the visceral finale of the Second, though perhaps slower than you might expect in the neurotic Scherzo of No 2. In the finale of the Third he doesn't begin the build-up too soon, as can be a temptation, and even has a skip in his step.
The addition of two Nocturnes and the sublime Barcarolle simply confirm that though Hamelin has made many fabulous discs, particularly in repertoire of superhuman virtuosity, this is one of his very finest achievements to date.

February 2009

Hamelin's playing is refreshingly free from the "inverted comma" school of profundity, and he lets the music speak through him most eloquently. …though Hamelin has made many fabulous discs, particularly in reportoire of superhuman virtuosity, this is one of his very finest achievements to date.

12th January 2009

Because he seems to start from a position of being able to play all the notes without any apparent difficulty, he is able to concentrate on aspects of the music that you rarely get to hear elsewhere. Chopin often hides melodies in the inner parts and while for most pianists it is hard enough to make them heard at all, Hamelin is also able to give them shape and a real sensitivity.

Chopin - Piano Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3

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Recording of the Week, Hamelin proves his real class with Chopin

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