Marc-André Hamelin

Pianist Marc-André Hamelin, a “performer of near-superhuman technical prowess” (The New York Times), is known worldwide for his unrivaled blend of consummate musicianship. He continues to amass praise for his brilliant technique in the great works of the repertoire, and for his intrepid exploration of the rarities of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. He regularly performs around the globe with the leading orchestras and conductors of our time, and gives recitals at major concert venues and festivals worldwide.

Mr. Hamelin’s 2024-2025 season began with recitals in Asia at the Beijing Concert Hall, Xi’an Concert Hall, Seoul Arts Center, and in duo recitals with Charles Richard-Hamelin in Tokyo, Yokohama and Fukuoka with later solo recitals in Gulangyu, Chengdu and the Shanghai Symphony Hall.  European highlights include recitals in Warsaw, Ascona, Copenhagen, Toulouse, Cremona, Florence, Budapest, Detmold, Nijmegen, Herrenhausen, Ruhr, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and London’s Wigmore Hall.  Orchestral appearances include the RTVE Madrid, Bruckner Orchester Linz, and Prague Radio Symphony.  He returned to São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra in the fall for Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 and will return later in the season for a recital and Bernstein Symphony No. 2 and Rhapsody in Blue before touring with the orchestra to the Bogotá International Classical Music Festival.

In North America he returns to Carnegie Hall for Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s with Bernard Labadie.  Further orchestral appearances include the Cleveland Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, National Arts Center Orchestra in Ottawa and the orchestra of Quebec, Toledo, Amarillo and a complete Beethoven Concerti Cycle with the Edmonton Symphony.  Recital highlights include San Francisco Performances, Music Toronto, Boston’s Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum, the Music Room at Caramoor and the University of Georgia Presents.  He also tours with the Dover Quartet in a program that features his own Piano Quintet.

Summer 2024 included recitals at the Schubertiade, Deutschlandsberg, Banff Center, Vivace Festival, a duo recital with Charles Richard-Hamelin at Ottawa Chamberfest, and Liszt Piano Concertos 1 and 2 with Yannick Nezet-Seguin and the Orchestre Metropolitain at Festival de Lanaudiere and Domaine Forget.

An exclusive recording artist for Hyperion Records, Hamelin has released 91 albums to date, with notable recordings of a broad range of solo, orchestral, and chamber repertoire. In October 2024, Hamelin released his recording of Beethoven’s imposing Piano Sonata in B flat major, ‘Hammerklavier,’ Op. 106, coupled with the earlier Piano Sonata in C major, Op. 2, No. 3 which received incredible critical acclaim.

Featuring nine original pieces, Hamelin’s 2024 album New Piano Works is a survey of some of his own recent works, exhibiting his formidable skill as a composer-pianist whose music imaginatively and virtuosically taps into his musical forebears. “His previous offerings of his own music were rich, but his latest self-portrait album is on another level,” wrote The New York Times, one of many outlets that wrote glowing reviews. It was Hamelin’s first album of all original compositions since Études (2010). In 2023, Hyperion released Hamelin’s recording of Fauré’s Nocturnes & Barcarolles, with the four-hand Dolly suite, played with his wife, Cathy Fuller. A double album of C.P.E. Bach’s Sonatas & Rondos was released in 2022, and another of William Bolcom’s Complete rags. Both received wide critical acclaim and chart success.

Hamelin has composed music throughout his career, most of which is published by Edition Peters, including his Études and Toccata on L’homme armé, the latter commissioned by the Van Cliburn Foundation. Hamelin performed the Toccata along with music by C.P.E. Bach and Bolcom in an NPR Tiny Desk concert in 2023. His latest compositions include a piano quintet, which he premiered in 2022 with the Dover Quartet, and the solo piano works Hexensabbat and Mazurka, the latter commissioned by the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where the composer presented the first performance in spring 2024.

Hamelin makes his home in the Boston area with his wife, Cathy Fuller, a producer and host at Classical WCRB. Born in Montreal, he is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the German Record Critics’ Association, and over 20 of its quarterly awards. He has also received seven Juno Awards, 12 Grammy nominations, and the 2018 Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. In December 2020, he was awarded the Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Keyboard Artistry from the Ontario Arts Foundation. Hamelin is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Québec, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada.