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Liszt, Schubert, and Schubert/Liszt: Marc-André Hamelin (piano), Seattle Symphony, Dennis Russell Davies, Benaroya Hall, Seattle, 23.4.2009 (BJ)

Liszt: Mazeppa
Schubert, arranged by Liszt: Wanderer Fantasy, D760
Liszt: Totentanz, Paraphrase on Dies irae
Schubert: Symphony No.3 in D, D200


It didn’t seem likely at intermission, but by the end of this cleverly programmed concert I finally understood what it is about Marc-André Hamelin that my critical colleagues admire so much. For some years, I have attended his performances in the hope of being similarly wowed, only to encounter one disappointment after another. It was always clear that he could play more notes faster than almost anybody else, but where, I frequently wondered, was the music?

Well, Hamelin’s electrifying delivery of Liszt’s Totentanz on this occasion set me resoundingly (an apt word!) straight. This was playing in the authentic grand manner. The tone ranged from thunder to whisper, the articulation was magisterial, the glissandos were suitably astounding, and all the rhetoric of this supremely rhetorical piece was brilliantly put across, with the help of an enthusiastic and alert orchestral contribution under Dennis Russell Davies’s baton. Indeed, it certainly needed to be alert: at one point, the orchestra only just managed to stay with the pianist as he pressed eagerly forward. But the very danger of such spontaneity carried its own excitement with it, and was certainly not to be regretted.

Hamelin deserved every decibel of the exceptionally vociferous standing ovation that followed, in which I happily joined. Altogether, it was as if a completely different pianist had played Totentanz from the uncommunicative one we had heard in the first half of the concert. In Liszt’s piano and orchestra arrangement of Schubert’s “Wanderer” Fantasy, Hamelin never made the piano sing. The tone in middle and low registers was mystifyingly dead at soft dynamic levels and harsh at loud ones, and those intended coruscations at the top of the keyboard – which would ring out so thrillingly in Totentanz – emerged curiously dull. Phrasing, too, often seemed merely arbitrary: there were many phrases, especially in the magical Adagio section based on the song that gave Schubert’s Fantasy its sobriquet, where one note, and by no means always the most important one, suddenly stuck out of the line like a sore thumb.

I don’t think the enormous gulf in quality between Hamelin’s two performances on this evening can be explained simply on the theory that Liszt is congenial to his temperament and Schubert isn’t; a few years ago I heard him play the two Liszt concertos in Philadelphia with more efficiency than panache. No matter: this Totentanz finally convinced me that he is indeed a virtuoso of the first order.

In this second program of his engagement, Davies once again demonstrated his versatility. Admittedly he began the evening with a performance of Liszt’s Mazeppa that seemed to hang fire slightly, but he ended it with a Schubert Third Symphony so brisk and sparkling as to make even more welcome the news that his complete recording of Haydn’s 107 symphonies is due for release on the Sony label later this year. I regretted only the omission of repeats in the da capo of the minuet. Aside from a graceful solo from associate principal cellist Susan Williams in the “Wanderer,” it was after intermission that the orchestra sounded at its best. The first two movements of the Schubert symphony, in particular, offer a principal clarinetist many chances to shine, and Christopher Sereque seized them to excellent effect, while his woodwind fellow-principals, notably oboist Ben Hausmann, were equally successful with their solos.

It has been a stimulating couple of weeks with Dennis Russell Davies on the podium. I may have had my reservations about one performance – and one work – or another, but nothing the conductor did was without interest, and the shape of both programs was as rewarding as it was enterprising. I hope he will be back soon.

Bernard Jacobson


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