Albéniz: Iberia

Iberia is 12 separate works bound into 4 books of 3 apiece. They are not suites of pieces in the way we usually regard Chopin's preludes as being a single suite for performance in toto. They are more like Brahms's later piano works, grouped in collections that admit of performance either as grouped or equally well as separate items. I don't hear them as 'representing' towns in Spain, Corpus Christi processions and what have you. These places and these events had their own characteristic music, recalled but not quoted or imitated by Albeniz, and it is this music, not the locations and activities directly, that he evokes in his own original music. Hamelin is not French but Canadian, and while he inclines more to the French content in the music than others do he has an effortless sense of the Spanish rhythms, and when it comes to Navarra at the end of the recital he gives a full-blooded 'Spanish' rendering suited to this piece, which the composer thought too straightforward and crowd-pleasing to belong with the others, replacing it with Jerez. The Frenchness in Hamelin's way of doing things comes in various forms, usually cool and lucid but not afraid of some impressionistic pedalling when he sees fit, as you can hear right away in the first number, the so-called evocation simply entitled 'prelude' by Albeniz.

I think what I like best about this recital is the sense of effortless command about it. It may seem an odd comparison, but Iberia reminds me of Brahms's Paganini variations in one important respect - it presents the player with some technical challenges of the kind we used to think mind-boggling except that they seem to be easy meat for today's crop of technicians, and it demands that they be not just overcome but played as if the performer had not even noticed them, otherwise the music can sound dull and ugly. Whatever sense Hamelin's playing conveys to you it is not a sense of struggle. Everything is under perfect control, but there is a real feeling of enjoyment and of genuine love of the music as well as (to my ears anyway) a slight but definite sense of quiet triumph. The other thing that thrills me about this player is a real feeling of individuality about him. It's individuality without eccentricity or wilfulness too, which is a hard trick to take - Argerich for one is nothing if not individual, but a sense of wilfulness is all part of the deal too. Both Horowitz and Michelangeli disparaged the younger generation of players for what they perceived as a lack of differentiation among them, but I wonder whether Michelangeli himself might not have found some characteristics to admire in Hamelin, these being of course characteristics similar to his own, which were what he mainly approved of.

Albeniz's music is music of the mind as well as of the heart. Excessive heartiness in playing it tends to put me off, and Hamelin is very much to my own taste although so are other styles. The influences of his French contemporaries only go a certain distance in Albeniz's writing. The harmony is more tonal than Ravel's and more so still than Debussy's, and I fancy I catch a touch of Faure in his handling of key-shifts. I am not at all surprised that Debussy thought Eritana, which comes last of the 12 pieces in order of publication, to be the best of the lot, as it could almost be taken for his own work at least in part. Debussy and Ravel were more than slightly keen on giving a Spanish flavour to their own work, they knew how to mix the idioms, and they knew another master of the technique when they heard one. However music exists only in performance, and the performer has to be such a master in his or her own right too. Hamelin fills the bill for me, but if you find too much Frenchness in some of the earlier numbers, try the composer's rejected Navarra at the end by way of counterbalance. Albeniz never actually finished it, his pupil de Severac tagged a few bars on, but Hamelin gives us a barnstorming conclusion, nearly half the length of the total piece, by William Bolcom. This is more as I like it, and I hope you will too.

Until now.

Which is not say that Marc Andre Hamelin's performance supersedes de Larrocha. It is just different and, on its own terms, equally valid; it provides a revealing new light on the many facets of this ever-fascinating set of pieces - much praised by Messiaen amongst others. De Larrocha captures the essence of these Spanish landscapes with a crystalline brilliance that perfectly reflects the brightness and heat of the Spanish sun, the clarity of its skies and the earthiness of the land and its people. Hamelin, on the other hand, is more impressionist in his approach. He makes these works cousins to the Debussian or Ravelian view of Spain - think Debussy's Iberia or Ravel's Rapsodie Espagnole. Try the first piece of the Suite, Evocacion, for a flavour of what I mean. With Hamelin there is a little more heat-haze over the landscape than there is with de Larrocha: speeds can be a little slower, a little more languorous: there is time to take in a little more of the detail of Albeniz's often daring harmonies as they shift and change and inner voices come to the fore. When virtuoso technique is called for (which is pretty often and not only in the louder faster pieces), Hamelin is, as you would expect, more than equal to the task - and it is never virtuosity for virtuosity's sake, but always at the service of the music.

The extra pieces are all worth hearing and wonderfully played, if not in the same class as Iberia. The completion of Navarra makes a more balanced and satisfying piece of it than we're used to - but why leave it to the end of the disc (where it admittedly makes an exciting finale) instead of attaching it to the end of Iberia here it really belongs? That quibble aside, this is a highly commendable disc. Hamelin has clearly thought through his interpretations very carefully and presents a thrilling range of colour, harmony and melody - though I wouldn't want to be without one of the de Larrocha performances as well.