Reviews
Following his debut at the Hamburg Chopin Festival , June 12, 2025.
The four scherzos by Chopin, performed with sumptuous fervor, swept the audience into a pianistic whirlwind—especially the Scherzo in B minor, Op. 31, whose unmatched dramatic intensity made it a piece worthy of a grand finale.
On the album ÉCHOS: Chopin, Granados, Albéniz. Released by Analekta.
As alluring in the Albéniz as he is both elegantly light- footed and expressive in the waltzes, the Canadian pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin is in delightful form here. ★★★★
Charles Richard-Hamelin interprets these works at the highest pianistic level, with great joy in playing and a great sense for the individual characters of the pieces. The phenomenal brilliance with which he performs the “Valse Poetico” No. 8 is reminiscent of his famous namesake. But the Canadian also masters the slow Chopin pieces, such as the A minor waltz op. 34 No. 2, with beautiful sound and cultivated rubato. A successful album by a pianist who deserves much more attention.
Richard-Hamelin’s ardently idiomatic Granados Allegro de concierto easily holds its own […] while Granados’s Valses poéticos are deliciously pointed and characterised […] An album of delights.
Charles Richard-Hamelin knows how to lead the listener through this dense work, which he approaches with an appropriate sense of timing and subtlety of touch, further proof of his instrumental mastery and artistic acuity.
About Concerto No. 23. – Album Mozart with Les Violons du Roy and Jonathan Cohen. Released by Analekta.
[The pianist] is masterful. He has a way of singing that is quite extraordinary; all his phrase endings are extremely meticulous. Every little rhythmic cell, every theme is inhabited, embodied […].
A very fine dialogue, a very fine question-and-answer game (with the orchestra). I loved the piano […] A lot of dignity, a simplicity, a consistency in the playing […] Really splendid playing […]
The piano is absolutely, sumptuously mastered, articulate […] he’s perfectly at ease in what he’s doing. What he does is quite extraordinary, with an extremely matt sound, very present, the articulation is very clear, the left hand has its own timbre, the right hand another timbre. It’s quite impressive, I must say […]
Following his concert with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Daniel Raiskin, Sept. 26, 2024.
Title: Acclaimed pianist applies deft touch to Chopin catalogue
A memorable performance […] After a relatively brief orchestral introduction, Richard-Hamelin marked his first entry during the opening Maestoso, immediately displaying his sensitive artistry with every note carefully placed, every chord artfully voiced, with a flexible rubato the hallmark of the composer’s style. […] An enthusiastic standing ovation with three curtain calls. A highly intimate performance. […].
Review of the Beethoven concert at Maison Symphonique de Montréal.
Charles Richard-Hamelin was the busiest man at the concert. While he is no stranger to Beethoven’s sonatas for violin and piano (…), the composer’s Concerto No. 4 is a recent addition to his repertoire. Hearing him play it with such depth at the age of 31, one wonders what heights Charles Richard-Hamelin will have reached in 20 or 30 years’ time. The cadenzas of the first and third movements were played with extraordinary commitment, teetering between tumult and tenderness.
The young pianist’s strength, splendour and sense for emphasis were equally captivating as his enormous ability to convey dream, poetry and longing.
Charles Richard-Hamelin is clearly a musician-pianist: fluent, multi-faceted and tonally seductive […] Melodic inflection is curvaceous, natural and discreetly sensuous.
Richard-Hamelin has bold, original ideas about the music he plays, the emotional reservoirs to back them up and the technical equipment to convey them without distraction.
Following his concert at the Martinu Festival, Czeck Republic, March 31, 2025.
The soloist was in unparalleled form, his performance was outstanding in every respect and with each scherzo he brought the fully packed hall to ever greater enthusiasm.
On the album Mozart: Concertos nos. 20 & 23, with Jonathan Cohen and Les Violons du Roy. Released by Analekta.
This recording is a joy. Richard-Hamelin delivers a polished and elegant performance, the phrasing clearly articulated, while under Cohen’s skilful baton, Les Violons du Roy prove a formidable and sensitive partner.
This second Mozart collaboration between Charles Richard-Hamelin and Les Violons du Roy is a thoroughly joyful listen. The soloist is elegant in two of the composer’s best-loved concertos. His delicate touch draws out a golden, bell-like resonance that contrasts beautifully with the chamber strings, whose period bows ensure the texture is never too rich or Romantic. ★★★★★
From the intense opening of No. 20 to the joyful arrival of No. 23, Charles Richard-Hamelin and Jonathan Cohen form a compelling Mozart partnership.
On the album Schumann: The Three Violin Sonatas. Andrew Wan and Charles Richard-Hamelin. Released by Analekta.
Wan brings to the table a poetic litheness, precision, silvery purity and tonal clarity, inflecting Schumann’s limpid phrases with a gentle ease, complementing Richard-Hamelin’s velvet-gloved sonority and glowing cantabile to perfection.
Effortlessly beautiful playing from both performers coupled with exemplary recording quality makes for another outstanding release.
After recording the sonatas for violin and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven, a triptych that won numerous awards, including the Juno for Classical Album of the Year – Small Ensemble (2022) and an ADISQ award, Andrew Wan and Charles Richard-Hamelin continue their fruitful collaboration by performing the complete sonatas for violin and piano by Robert Schumann (1810-1856). A perfect work to highlight the complicity that has developed between the concertmaster of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the pianist who won the silver medal at the 2015 Frédéric Chopin International Piano Competition.
On the album Chopin: 24 Préludes – Andante Spianato & Grande Polonaise Brillante.
Richard-Hamelin describes this set of pieces as a microcosm of Chopin’s piano music as a whole, adding, “it is Chopin at his most beautiful, heart-wrenching, experimental, dissonant, sometimes even violent. It is a fascinating journey through the human psyche and my interpretation aims to show precisely that.
On the album Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonatas for Violin and Piano (vol.2): Sonatas Nos. 1,2,3 and 5. Andrew Wan and Charles Richard-Hamelin. Released by Analekta.
The Canadian musicians treat the Op 12 and Op 24 sonatas with bountiful finesse and discernment, bringing vibrancy to the light-hearted interplay and poetic elegance to passages in which lyricism is paramount.
This remarkable pianist shapes each phrase with careful attention, then links it to the text one in a way that tells a compelling story from beginning to end. […] If there is one defining characteristic of Richard-Hamelin’s playing it’s how he wields the tools of musical rhetoric – stretching time by slightly slowing down and speeding up, and playing with the silences between notes – to ensure that the narrative tension never goes out of the piece he is playing.
