“No final thoughts”: Marc-André Hamelin

Ahead of his performance with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in August, Marc-André Hamelin talked with Cameron Kelsall, from Bachtrack.

Hamelin acknowledges that the thrill of live performance, and of classical music in general, comes from the frisson of new discovery possible with even the most familiar of works. “There are always little things that can happen during performances that will give you ideas of how to firm up certain things musically, to give you more understanding within the form,” he says. “These can be very obvious or very subtle. But anything you can come up with will really enrich the musical discourse. I think it can be really delightful when accidents happen – when you do something that you don’t intend to do, but somehow it makes everything sound better. That’s the really exciting aspect of the evolving perception of a piece.”

In recent years, Hamelin has gained a highly regarded reputation as a composer, in addition to his performance career. This blooming part of his career fulfils an interest that stretches back to his earliest days at the piano.

“It started in an extremely primitive way when I started lessons at five years old,” he says. “My father was a very good amateur pianist, and he had some music paper lying around. I was singing his scores, which looked formidable to me, but what do you want to do as a kid? You want to do the same thing. I started scribbling things that probably made no sense, but at least the impulse was there.

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