French Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin, known for spine-chilling feats of virtuosity, surprised many people with a series of revelatory recordings of Haydn's piano sonatas, whose difficulties are more interpretive than technical. Now he returns with the three genuine keyboard concertos of Haydn. Actually to call them piano concertos is a misnomer; except for Piano Concerto in D major, Hob. 18/11, that opens the album, these were harpsichord works, and little is added to them by playing them on a piano. That D major ...
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French Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin, known for spine-chilling feats of virtuosity, surprised many people with a series of revelatory recordings of Haydn's piano sonatas, whose difficulties are more interpretive than technical. Now he returns with the three genuine keyboard concertos of Haydn. Actually to call them piano concertos is a misnomer; except for Piano Concerto in D major, Hob. 18/11, that opens the album, these were harpsichord works, and little is added to them by playing them on a piano. That D major concerto has a witty "Hungarian" finale, with some great surprises along the way, that bears comparison with similar movements in works of other genres. That work is unquestionably the strongest of the three, but even there the concerto form does not bring out the best in Haydn the way it did for Mozart. Hamelin generally has less to work with here, but once again he excels where you might not expect him to: in small-ensemble Classical-era ensemble work. He and the Quebec...
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