MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN, PIANO SATU R DAY, NOV E M BER 17 • 8 P M BA L DW I N A U DI TOR I UM Tickets: $25 • $10 Duke Students Reserved Seating
Nearly three decades have passed since Marc-André Hamelin emerged as a new titan of solo piano. Although a lauded composer in his own right, he has staked his performance career on definitive interpretations of landmark works, cultivating a reputation for technical sophistication and musical bravado. In the twenty years since The New York Times proclaimed that Hamelin had “made a career of playing the seemingly unplayable,” he has only gotten better, exploring lesser-known composers and modern masters alike, all the while expanding the emotional breadth of his playing. Hamelin presents a characteristically bold program fit for a pianist whose hands The New Yorker called “among the
wonders of the musical world.” He begins with Busoni’s arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor, conjuring a church organ’s power. Schumann’s rhapsodic Fantasie in C Major leads into six popular songs by French singersongwriter Charles Trenet. Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s Cipressi is a spellbinding meditation on Italy’s stately cypress trees. Hamelin concludes with Chopin’s grand PolonaiseFantaisie in A-flat Major, and his playful Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, with its rapid cascades of notes and moments of sublime delicacy. PROGRAM Bach: Chaconne in D Minor, BWV 1004 (arr. Busoni) Schumann: Fantasie in C Major, op. 17 Alexis Weissenberg: Six Arrangements of Charles Trenet Songs Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Cipressi, op. 17 Chopin: Polonaise-Fantasie No. 7 in A-flat Major, op. 61 Chopin: Scherzo No. 4 in E Major, op. 54 23