Marc-André Hamelin talks about Sergei Rachmaninoff 

Marc-André is not only a briliant pianist and composer, but he is a real avatar in our times, for he is not the typical 'classical' pianist that you find in our days.

Thank you for posting this -- despite the small audience that will appreciate it -- we do!

Maestro is candid beyond reproach. I learned much from his interview. I have adored Marc Hamelin's recordings. His natural humility attracts me to his humanity. Yes, it makes sense, attracted first to musician now the man. Looking forward to other interviews.

Dear Henleverag, if you have influence at all, please encourage Mr. Hamelin to record the Rachmaninoff 1st Sonata. It is passionate and thrilling in the extreme.

Amazing but also enlightening to see that MA-H is now an editor and accepted as such within the publishing community. An ultimate authority on performance should be respected in their comments or suggestions in how to play such difficult pieces.

11:04 someone is hungry

Whew....I could listen to Marc-Andre explain ANYTHING and be thrilled! SOOO then what did you do the to the pickle jar!!!! I MUST KNOW!!!! 4:25 Legit the passion and respect and understanding. Just wow from a true master of the art and style. Just amazing

Wonderfully done. Marc is amazing.

I agree about chopin variations awes. piece deserves much more playings..

Great insight on how to think about fingering in general. Thanks!

Excellent documentary and a combination of great talent: Rachmaninov, of course; Hamelin, of course; but don't forget Henle Verlag who produce beautifully laid-out and accurate scores. Thanks for posting.

Whatever critics thought of Rachmaninoff in the mid-1950s, we heard him then in recordings that came out then--such as Artur Rubinstein's of the Second Piano Concerto, which I fell in love with at age six. My nephew was just three years old when he heard a recording of that concerto. At the end of that recording, he jumped up clapping and gave me a hug!

Very interesting comments about how smaller handed pianists cope. I had heard that some pieces really require large hands. Thanks for this. I'm no pianist but it's very interesting to realize how complex and fascinatingly deep the rabbit hole goes in interpreting a score.:)

I found this to be very informative and interesting. Thank you Henle.

Great upload! *THANK YOU!!*

A very vital and necessary interview. This edition of Rachmaninoff's music is important, and for a pianist to have Hamelin's ideas, opinions, and fingerings is invaluable. Thank you for posting this.

Yes, my piano teacher at the Saarland Music Conservatory told me the same truth, invalidating the Czerny piano teaching, and telling me that the bestfingerings are those that are inttuitive and and taken from other pianists' ideas-even if you put your thumb on black keys!

Very very good and pertinent questions. Thank you for this

Wonderful pianist!!!

Amazing. Thank you for this!

What an engaging interview. And forget his musical gifts! Just let me have his speaking voice!

Thank you for the 0p.39 no.9 fingering for the thirds, it feels more in control for me just using 1+3 and 2+4!

6 years later we are still waiting for me Rachmaninoff works in the Henle collection! Please make it happen.

He seems like an incredibly charming person.

Mr. Hamlin, you are a gem! Your speaking is as full of direct clarity as when you bring the piano to new life in ways no one has ever heard. Impassioned but logical, you capture the emotive content. It no longer has the great public it once enjoyed. Yours speaking and performances can change all that. God bless. I hope I can see you in concert and kiss your hand afterward. Right or Left.

he is indeed an enthusiast, non pareil....so appreciative for this

The most interesting parts - in fact, really the only interesting parts - are those where Hamelin gives us an example of either Rachmaninoff's fingering or his own and shows why it makes sense. Yes, of course, fingerings are personal and depend on your hand size and shape, etc., but a fingering that you might not have thought of, or that isn't the "obvious" or "simplest" option, can often affect the sound or phrasing of the music, so, yes, there is value in adding (suggested) fingerings to an Urtext. What is abhorrent is editions that are smothered in fingerings, on almost every note, even when there really is only one possible option. Personally, I always try to find the fingering that allows my hands to remain as relaxed as possible, without making large or awkward stretches, which eventually tire the hand and can make the muscles tighten up. Each to his own! Thanks for posting.

The golden silence of Dominik Rahmer (Henle), at every time the Master had given some half-serious response, were priceless. Master Hamelin had to automatically dig into more elaborative opinions as a 20-year-old music student thinking about the efforts of someone's fingering suggestions... These reflections are meaningful to the composer's works, and wonderfully commented with fruitful details we can find.

As a small-handed pianist (octaves are a stretch), embarking on Rachmaninoff pieces were always my most ambitious journeys. Lots and lots of rolling, pedaling, and even sometimes having to leave out notes completely. Rachmaninoff definitely did not compose with the small-handed community in mind😂

Very valuable interview ...

You can practice all of your scales with the C Major fingering which while challenging is really useful in training the thumb to play on the black notes. This is especially useful in developing jazz solo lines.

he is phenomenal

SR's 1st sonata is a marvelous, visionary work if it's played the right way. It's also very well made. John Ogdon's recording for RCA around 1968 is my ideal. More recently there's Alexandre Kantarow who is on the same level. It would be wonderful if Marc-Andre would give it his attention.

A rich conversation.

I bet these are good fingerings. I may want these editions. I too can reach a 12th like Rach himself. So these fingerings will be perfect. Thank you for producing them.

A true genius of our times and very humble too.

11:02 Come on, give Marc some food

Interesting. I had heard that the author of the notorious Grove article was not Blom but Rosa Newmarch (a critic like a kind of Rosa Klebb but without the charm)

Excellent.

When professional pianists are together you can be sure they will end up talking about fingerings! I remember three Chopin prize winners discussing at length Lipatti's fingerings in the double note reprise of the first theme of Bartok 3 for instance. Pianists have different shaped hands and different sized hands. Ashkenazy has small hands and has confessed to leaving out notes when playing Rachmaninoff. Hamelin's Rach examples, like the accepted sliding of the 5th finger off black notes in Chopin, make a 'musical' difference. In the end, I suppose, it's what works for you musically and technically.

16:20 If the text of early editions really is wrong, and accidentals really should be added, I wonder how come nobody has suggested the change before.

This is amazing if op33 No 4 actually has fingering written in it? I have been looking and the edition I have is so empty. I would love to have this, sounds like a dream?!

great chops.......and that is about it......

Always buy the urtext versions you need to start from the source with the composer.

he ages as fast as he plays :(

God I didn't know his English was so amazing

I've recorded myself playing the g min op 23 prelude. Feel free to check out my fingering of the middle section...

please i want to know the name of the piece played in the first of the video

Rachmaninoff said how is his works were to be interpreted was entirely up to the person playing them.

6:06 Like to him its so rather mundane...to me its magical....Just SO cool. 8:01 (>.

It's not about hand size. Plenty of the greatest had average to small hands. All about skills.

Shouldn't an 'Urtext' edition be - by definition - only what the composer specified without any additions. How can it still be Urtext with Hamelins fingering?!

7:00

0:25 al ver como presiona el teclado con el codo: me dolió y no fue a mí

I had a piano teacher when I was a kid. 90% of the time consisted of giving me fingers to the music. I cannot afford a teacher now, so editions with fingerings from masters is good way of learning the process.

Can Henle Verlag please discuss WHY all the handbook editions of Back,Mozart & Beethoven ect. unravel & come apart faster than their paper editions? I've had to literally re-buy the Mozart 18 Sonatas volume 3 times times already. It quite disappointing especially considering the prohibitive cost of repeat buying the score over & over again. The only solution I've had so far was ,for example, the paper editions of both the Chopin Preludes & the Etudes bound together ( IN LEATHER) into 1 volume. This book has lasted in good shape since 1987& I still use it. None of my other Henle books last long or well-the hardback material is cheap & brittle--they should reconsider & redesign these books. Most of my other Henle Verlag hardback editions see the trashcan as they get used up quick & also page turning is very problematic & unfriendly. Great editions otherwise. Thanks.

Roslavets is so awesome

i wish Rachmaninov could hear you say that.

surprised that Hamelin plays the 1931 "revision" of the original (1913) version of Rach's piano sonata #2; most world-class pianists who "know the score" now play the original. The revision is a cut-and-paste butcher job, slicing out c. 7-8 minutes of solid piano writing from the original and in no way improving the work...which was a c. 24" masterpiece to begin with. What happened is this: Rachmaninoff, who had severe manic-depressive episodes and occasional doubts about his own music, was then living in New York City and there undergoing treatment by a "psychoanalyst" who, like all of his peculiar tribe, was himself batshit crazy. He told Rach that "the attention span of the typical American concert audience is 17 minutes..." .Rach then went back to his apartment and went to work with scissors and library paste. His extensive revision of the 4th piano concerto, op. 40 - completed in Russia during 1917 and then repeatedly fooled with by the composer in America during 1927-41, is somewhat the same; he did tighten the structure, but cut out way too much good music in the process.

Any advanced pianist should be able to make their own fingerings for everything, when reading scores. It's such a minor issue in my opinion.

I still don't understand why anyone would need to play that passage 1-2-1-2-1-2

noice

gubaidulina

what the heck has happened to his eyes????? Does not look good at all.

jazz sonata - is perfect !! play anything like this. no Rachmaninoff, Procofiev !!!!! loshara !!!

It is arguable that music score editions might need fingerings, but I know that most, if not all, women need fingering.

OMG, for what this shit??? Every pianist can play the piece as he thinks. That's open. When someone thinks about fingerings, the actual beginning of an interpretation is often missing.