MAH

Saw Marc-Andre Hamelin in concert in San Francisco last night. In fact I flew out here just for this; but inasmuch as Nicky lives here, I decided to make a weekend of it. The theme for this weekend was orange and dark chocolate.

I’ve been telling everyone I know that MAH is the greatest pianist alive, technically, and in fact may be the greatest since the Golden Age. He often invites comparison with Josef Hofmann with his astonishing technical wizardry. Sitting in the theater, some ten rows from the stage, I thought, this is how people who heard Hofmann, Rachmaninoff, and Horowitz live might have felt. It was surreal.

This was only my second time hearing MAH live. I saw him in Seattle just before the pandemic, when he played rather a disappointing program consisting of a Mozart concerto for two pianos, alongside some little-known contemporary composer-pianist he wanted to promote, followed by the word premiere of a piano concerto composed by the aforementioned would-be Rachmaninoff. The Mozart was meh and the second one was like any other piece composed in the last twenty years. The piano was just there. I don’t remember if he played an encore, because I had a bad hangover from drinking with my team the night before, and the program had put me in a sour mood. MAH left after the first half, and so did I, deciding that expecting me to through a Haydn symphony in my state was asking too much of me. A couple people in my row chuckled because they must have thought I wasn’t aware there was a second half, but oh I was aware.

I made sure this time to check the program before buying tickets. The highlight of this program was Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Sonata — a fantastic piece — so I didn’t have to debate very long. The rest of the program was no less worthy: classic MAH fare ranging from Haydn Sonatas to obscure atonal works by modern composers. He played a piece based on Frank Zappa’s Ruth is Sleeping that showcased a wide variety of tone color and textures, even if it was a little hard to sleep through. Tip, a piece MAH had commissioned, was particularly fun. It was a modern collage of well-known classical pieces. I thought I caught some pop music in there as well, and I learnt later there may have been some Herbie Hancock. It was a fun mental exercise to try and identify each piece as it flitted in and out of the music unpredictably, like shapes in a kaleidoscope. I think I identified 18 pieces, though some of them may have been a stretch.

Ended the evening with pizza and Pinot Noir, which I drank sparingly, for fear of fucking up my flight back to Seattle early the next morning. Enjoyed a slice of Nicky’s exquisite dark chocolate and orange loaf before retiring.