Marc-André Hamelin: Found Objects/ Sound Objects
By Jed Distler
This fascinating programme begins with Ruth is Sleeping, originally written by Frank Zappa for the Synclavier sampling keyboard and later arranged by Ali N Askin for two pianists at either one or two keyboards. Its rhapsodic figurations relentlessly hover between tonality and atonality without committing to either camp, and only occasionally find points of respite. Compared to the strong personality characterising Zappa’s ultra-sophisticated and unclassifiable ‘pop’ (for lack of a better word) output, I’ve often found his ‘serious’ through-composed works to be academic and frankly anonymous.
Yet Marc-André Hamelin’s joyful and cogent interpretation obviously revels in Zappa’s formidable keyboard challenges, as well as the similarly discursive though thicker textures throughout Salvatore Martirano’s Stuck on Stella. The work goes on too long for what it has to say, and it seems that Martirano’s workmanship reveals more care in softer, lyrical sections than in the relatively heavy-handed sequences dominated by massive chords. However, you’ll never hear such chords so ideally voiced and projected as in Hamelin’s rendition.