Ludwig van Montréal reports that the WMCT 2015 CDA winner has been honoured twice by the Quebec industry association ADISQ, for his Analekta recordings of the Chopin Piano Concertos with the OSM and Kent Nagano, and for his album of Beethoven Piano Sonatas 6, 7, and 8 with violinist Andrew Wan.
A few months after receiving the 10th WMCT Career Development Award, Charles was the silver medalist and winner of the Krystian Zimerman award for the best sonata, at the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2015. He has just issued a CD of Chopin concertos, with Kent Nagano and the OSM.
The CD received immediate attention in the UK. Classic FM, the most important classical radio station in London, has chosen it as its Album of the week! Starting April 15, tracks from the album will be played every day on the station which has 5.3 million listeners tuning in every week.
From the April 2019 review by Alex Baran in Wholenote Magazine:
“Charles Richard-Hamelin’s recent recording Chopin: Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 (Analekta, AN 2 9146) is an exhilarating encounter with these two items of standard repertoire. There is a freshness in this performance that owes everything to its collaborators. Kent Nagano and the OSM are deeply aware of how much Chopin has vested in the piano’s role. Their ability to morph into something purely ethereal for the slow movement of Concerto No.2 is magical. The balance and unity across the ensemble, in this and similar passages, support the piano exquisitely. So much of the piano part in this movement is in simple octaves, albeit often very ornamented and fast. Richard-Hamelin performs it with absolute fluidity, as if it were an extended keyboard recitative. The time signature seems to dissolve, leaving only a hint of anything resembling a beat as the soloist and orchestra flow toward some distant ending.
The essence of dance that is inherent in Chopin’s writing saves the pianist from a conflictual role with the orchestra. The two are instead a pair of dancers elevating the solo instrument above the ensemble…. Hamelin and Nagano have delivered such a transcendent experience that [any] criticism seems somehow lost if not irrelevant in the overwhelming beauty of this performance.”
The Toronto Summer Music Academy has announced its program for 2019. Two winners of the WMCT CDA will be mentors in its Chamber Music Institute: Yegor Dyachkov (cello, 2000) and Charles Richard-Hamelin (piano, 2015). They will coach ensembles and also perform with their students in reGENERATION concerts.
The 2015 Career Development Award winner describes his professional and personal development over the last two years.
Our celebrated 2015 Career Development Award winner will appear in Peter Oundjian’s final Mozart Festival, on January 19, 2018, to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto no.23 in A major, K.488, with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Details and ticket information on the TSO website.
Pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin has been invested into the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec (OALQ). Charles won the WMCT’s Career Development Award competition in 2015 and played the final concert in Music in the Afternoon’s 119th season on May 4. It’s an incredible honour and achievement for Charles who is one of 16 people invested in the recent ceremony.
Congratulations from all your friends and supporters at the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto.
Charles Richard-Hamelin plays Music in the Afternoon May 4 in his first solo Toronto recital. “I’m looking forward to my proper Toronto recital debut,” he said in a recent note to past president and Career Development Award chair Annette Sanger.
Annette presented Charles with first prize in April 2015 when he won the Career Development Award 10th Anniversary competition in Walter Hall.
That same year he went on to win silver in the International Fryderyk Chopin Competition in Warsaw and the Krystian Zimerman award for the best sonata at the competition.
Listen to Charles at the Chopin competition
17TH INTERNATIONAL FRYDERYK CHOPIN PIANO COMPETITION 21 October 2015, Warsaw…
YOUTUBE.COM
Canadian composer John Beckwith delivers the Tuning Your Mind lecture on May 4 before the Charles Richard-Hamelin Concert.
The lecture in Walter Hall starts at 12:15 pm.
The April issue of Wholenote Magazine features Music in the Afternoon upcoming programming on p. 20. Pick up a copy at your local music venue, or read it online.
Three recent WMCT award winners received “spectacular” praise following performances in Generation Next concert at Koerner Hall Thursday Nov. 10.
Pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin, winner of the $20,000 Career Development Award in May 2015; cellist Stéphane Tétreault, second prize winner of $10,000 in the same competition and mezzo soprano Emily D’Angelo who won the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto Centennial Scholarship in 2015-16 are praised as “exceptional young Canadians on the verge of major international careers” by Joseph So in Musical Toronto.
