Of course there is room for performances that do a bit more with the music, but it's clear that Hamelin is anything but a one-note pianist. 'Eintritt' (Entrance) features unusual, asymmetrical phrasing. 82 (1848-49) consists of nine short pieces similar in style and spirit to the composer's Kinderszenen (1838). 15, as a sort of encore, the entire program has an impressively sustained intimacy and quiet allusiveness. Schumann's Waldszenen (Forest Scenes), Op. His performances run almost completely counter to type: they are low-key, not fast, and in places almost impressionistic. The young French pianist Nicolas Bringuier makes his recording debut here with this collection of pieces by German Romantic Robert Schumann: Waldszenen, Drei Fantasiestücke, and, as the pièce de résistance, the Fantasie in C major. This would seem to be anything but Hamelin's home ground, but he succeeds in setting a mood and keeping it going. Both works superimpose murky psychological threads on nature imagery, naturally much more explicitly in Janácek's case. 82 (Forest Scenes), with Book I of Leos Janácek's On the Overgrown Path, its natural successor. In this one, he programs Schumann's Waldszenen, Op. As his career has developed, though, he has sought to avoid being stereotyped, offering some fine recordings of sonatas by Haydn and proceeding to the generally non-virtuosic Schumann. French Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin is known for his recordings of ultra-virtuoso music, starting with Liszt and going up from there to the likes of Alkan, Godowsky, and the iconoclast Leo Ornstein.

Schumann waldszenen program notes