It was a typically golden-hued September day in Toronto. On my way to one of my regular weekend walks, I tuned in to CBC Radio’s This is my music – a rather charming programme featuring musicians, often Canadian, sharing their favourite music. The guest was Charles Richard-Hamelin, Silver Medallist and winner of the Krystian Zimerman prize at the 2015 Chopin Competition. Hamelin? Hmm … brother? Son? Cousin?

‘Everyone keeps asking us whether we are related. We are not,’ Richard-Hamelin tells me, laughing. It’s now late December and he is joining me from his Montreal home, having just finished his concert commitments for the year. Richard-Hamelin is the epitome of friendliness and charm. He wears a constant smile, and with his warm and welcoming eyes behind his glasses, he comes across as someone you’ve known all your life. Yet, paired with his modesty and down-to-earth-ness is also a profound intelligence and sensitivity.

I point out to him that his biography seems clearly divided into BC and AC: before and after his silver medal at the 2015 Warsaw Chopin Competition. He agrees that the Chopin Competition had an undeniable effect on shaping him into the pianist that he is today: ‘Before the competition I had never played professionally in Europe or indeed outside of Canada. I was the complete unknown and, you know, a kind of a black sheep in the competition. But already the following year, I think I played something like 85 concerts in 12 countries. And since then, I’ve been constantly recording albums. It also shaped me, in that I had to learn a lot of new music very quickly. So you learn on the job and there’s nothing that prepares you for that. You can prepare a whole year for one competition programme, but after that, when the real world starts, you have very little time to put a lot of information together, a lot of music.’

Since the competition, Richard-Hamelin has naturally been in high demand for his Chopin, especially in Japan, a country with which he feels a strong affinity. ‘They’ve kind of abducted me,’ he laughs. ‘I think I’ve toured nine times there; and 95 per cent of the time I’ve played Chopin. I think there’s even a Japanese anime based on Chopin!’ He is referring to the manga series The Forest of Piano, which follows the adventures of Kai, a boy from a red-light district who grows up to be a pianist and even performs at the Chopin Competition. ‘I love playing in Japan. They have some of the best pianos, technicians, halls, audiences and of course food. I love everything about Japan. And you know, every time I go there, I cannot simply repeat the same pieces. So it encourages me to learn more and more Chopin.’

It’s not just audience demand that places Chopin at the heart of his repertoire: ‘Chopin remains my favourite composer and the one that I feel the most at home with. It’s still difficult music to play, but it feels very natural for me, compared to, say, Liszt or Rachmaninov. So, slowly, after 10 years, I think I have the majority of Chopin’s works in my repertoire. It’s so great; you see, every time I learn a new Chopin piece, it feels like knowing something else about a friend. And I now learn Chopin really quickly. It’s interesting that the more you play a composer, the better you understand how he or she thinks; it’s really like having shorthand.’

Richard-Hamelin’s latest recording, ‘Échos’, his 12th with Analekta, is a carefully designed programme that juxtaposes Chopin with Albéniz and Granados. ‘I wanted to do a mixed-composer album, similar to my second disc, which placed Chopin alongside Beethoven and Enescu.’ The starting point for the new disc was a lesser-known Chopin work: the Allegro de concert, Op 46. ‘It has a very complicated compositional story. It began as a sketch for a Third Piano Concerto. He started working on it in his early 20s, then left it aside, and almost 10 years later went back to it. By then he was not playing with orchestras any more. But somehow in this piece there were musical ideas that he liked enough to convert it into a solo piano piece. The orchestral nature is very much still there. It follows the same structure as the first movement of the other concertos, with the orchestral tutti followed by the piano entrance.’ He admits that at first the piece felt rather square, even Germanic. ‘You know when you play Beethoven and Brahms, you have to imitate the sound of an orchestra all the time, right? Well, in Chopin you rarely do so. The sound comes out of the piano. You might imitate the human voice or singing, but you rarely think about a string quartet or an orchestra. But in this piece you have to think orchestrally for the tutti parts and then as a piano soloist for the solo parts. It’s both really interesting and difficult. You don’t get the kind of break you get when playing a concerto.’ Richard-Hamelin was also fascinated by ‘this mixture of very young and naive Chopin’ and the mature compositional style. ‘There are eight bars near the end, which I think are my favourite of anything he ever wrote. And it’s kind of buried at the end of that piece.’

Next, he discovered another piece with the same title and even opus number, this time by Granados. ‘The two don’t really have anything in common. Maybe it’s just happenstance. But I thought it was an interesting starting point, because I had played a lot of French, German or even Russian music but not much Spanish.’ As he explored Granados’s music, especially the Valses poéticos, Op 43, he felt much that was ‘humanesque and Chopinesque’ in that music. ‘He wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. These waltzes are very popular in guitar transcriptions, but not in their original version for piano. I fell in love with them and decided I could create a mirror image by including eight Chopin waltzes.’ For the latter he chose some of his favourites and devised an order that would fit well in concert, alternating slower and more melancholic waltzes with the faster and lighter ones. ‘These are deceptive pieces; on the surface they might seem simple, with clearer textures. But you have to do a lot more when there are fewer notes to play!’ Richard-Hamelin then explains how he tried to give each waltz an individual character ‘as you do with the Preludes’, yet creating connections that hold them together as an arc. ‘So we have two very different sides of the same composer: the extrovert, large concert-hall extravagant Allegro de concert emulating the orchestra on the one hand, and the intimate universe of the waltzes on the other.’

The programme is completed by Albéniz’s La Vega (the title refers to an area in north-eastern Seville). ‘It’s a masterpiece’, Richard-Hamelin says. ‘Stylistically it’s very evolved. It’s in A flat minor, so seven flats. And already from the first two notes, it feels like something from afar. You can almost picture the plains of Granada. And that’s what he’s trying to convey with his music: the view from the top of the Alhambra Palace.’ The idea of ‘musical reflection’ of a landscape then led to the disc’s overall title, ‘Échos’. ‘Echo because of the way I echo Granados’s works with the similar genres of large-scale and miniatures by Chopin. And also because of Albeniz’s La Vega being a musical echo of a real geographical place. In a live concert, I believe contrast is more important, whereas on a recording it’s unity that is essential. This particular programme works well in both settings, and I’ve played it in this exact order in various concerts, including my Wigmore Hall debut in June 2024.’ As with many other pianists, Richard-Hamelin usually runs his programmes in concerts before recording them. ‘In the case of “Échos” I’m glad I got to play the programme at least 30 or 40 times before recording it.’

We turn to the question of extra-pianistic inspiration for creating his intended sound world. ‘Granados was a pianist, and if I’m right, he didn’t compose anything for the guitar. But there’s a very interesting resource that helped me to build my interpretation. These were the piano rolls that Granados recorded of his own music, including the whole of Valses poéticos. Of course you can’t really take too many things from the sound of the piano rolls; but one thing that stood out for me was that he changes a lot of notes. I tried to appropriate some of his transitions and make them my own improvisations but in his style.’ The licence to greater freedom was confirmed when Richard-Hamelin came across historic recordings of Albéniz’s improvisations. ‘Despite the clear contrast between Chopin, Albéniz and Granados, I think the common thread is that they were all pianist-improvisers at the core; and that’s something I try to incorporate in the way I play those pieces, especially the waltzes.’

Charles Richard-Hamelin has recorded his 12th album for Analekta

I remember that in his radio programme Richard-Hamelin included a piece by the Armenian jazz pianist-improviser Tigran Hamasyan. So I ask him if jazz is a secret pleasure. ‘I don’t do it myself too much. When I was very young, I played in some bands. Then when classical music required more of my time, I had to let it go. But I have to say when I listen to music I listen equally to other styles and other genres. And yes, this guy, Tigran – he may be just 33 or 34 years old, but he’s one of the rare geniuses alive today! It’s really incredible what he’s able to do, especially the way he incorporates folk idioms from Armenia with so many influences from progressive rock or metal to more traditional jazz and so many things in between. I really admire someone like him who doesn’t try to fit in a box.’

There are other extramusical interests that play a part in Richard-Hamelin’s career and persona. He has often referred to his love for cinema; so I ask him whether he draws on that enthusiasm in his playing. ‘Maybe indirectly,’ he answers. ‘It comes out more in my teaching. When playing, certain things come to you instinctively, and you can’t easily put them into words. But when you have to convey those things to a student, then sometimes I make references to the way films work. For example, when you have a sudden cut right in the middle of a war scene and then you are transposed to a quiet room. That’s the kind of jarring contrast that you sometimes need in music like Schumann’s, which goes from one extreme to the next with little or no transition.’ Cinema occupies him also outside of classrooms and concert halls, especially during long journeys. ‘I’ve seen so many movies this year. But I also watch classic films.’ His latest obsession is Polish director Krzysztof Kies´lowski (1941‑96). ‘I’ve been watching this TV series that he had done in the late 1980s’, he tells me. I share with him my own love for the Polish director’s Three Colours trilogy, and how during my childhood in Iran, underground cinema and illegally smuggled and distributed films were a cultural refuge. He is fascinated by my experience of living in several different countries. ‘That’s what I call being an immigrant,’ I say. ‘At least I don’t need to worry which football team to root for, because I don’t have a sense of home at all.’ He laughs and sympathetically shakes his head. ‘I can’t even imagine how hard it could be. For me my home has always been Montreal.’

A native of Quebec, from just outside Montreal, Richard-Hamelin’s introduction to the piano was thanks to his father: ‘a mostly self-taught amateur pianist’, who started his son on their upright piano at home. ‘The very first thing he taught me was the Minuet from Bach’s Anna Magdalena notebook. Can you imagine that? That’s not the first thing to teach a four-year-old!’ But after two weeks and with 10-15 minutes of practice a day, he was able to play the piece, which led his father to seek out a ‘real teacher’. This was Paul Surdulescu – a Romanian pianist who had fled Ceaus¸escu’s dictatorship in the 1980s and had settled in Joliette, Richard-Hamelin’s native town. ‘He was maybe the most important teacher of my life. He told me he had bad teachers growing up in Romania and he had to teach himself how to play. And sometimes that makes for the best teachers. Because he had done it the hard way. And so, yes, he was instrumental, no pun intended, in my growing up’.

Richard-Hamelin stayed with Surdulescu from the age of five to 18. ‘It’s fairly rare that you stay with the same teacher for 13 years,’ he admits. ‘But somehow it was working. He gave me the right pieces, in that they were always musically interesting, with just enough challenge that I was learning something but that in the end I could play the piece well. I think that’s the best way of teaching children. So many times I’ve had kids who are 12 or 13 and they play Chopin’s Fourth Ballade, and it’s terrible; they can kind of play the notes, but it sounds awful. I think to myself: well, it’s not your fault. The fault is either with your parents or your teachers. You shouldn’t be playing this; you have the fingers to do maybe an Impromptu, or at the most the Second Scherzo, maybe. Each thing takes its own time, and some people have no patience today. So I’m glad that I worked my way really slowly and am grateful to my teacher for that. I went on to have many other teachers and influences. But I think the first teacher is the most important one.’

He went on to do his undergraduate studies in music at McGill University in Montreal. ‘I ended up with Sara Laimon, who was a former student of Boris Berman.’ Laimon told him about the Yale Master’s programme led by her former teacher. ‘She told me it’s a very good school, and, most importantly, that it’s free and comes with a full scholarship. I didn’t come from money at all. So I applied and got accepted. And it was a great experience working with Berman for two years.’

Following Yale, Richard-Hamelin returned to Montreal to do a ‘post-master’ programme at the Conservatoire de Montréal under André Laplante. It was around this time that he considered taking part in international competitions. ‘I was about 23 and I thought maybe it’s time to give it a shot.’ Although the idea came from Richard-Hamelin, he admits Laplante was an important influence. ‘He himself had gone through the Tchaikovsky Competition experience’ – this was in 1978, when with Pascal Devoyon he shared second place behind Mikhail Pletnev.

So Richard-Hamelin applied for ‘a bunch of smaller competitions’, but curiously was not accepted in any of them: ‘It’s kind of this Catch-22 thing, where you know if you don’t already have a prize to your name, it’s really hard to get in. Also sometimes the smallest competitions tend to be the most corrupt: the ones where those with ties to the jury end up winning. The bigger competitions protect themselves from that, and they accept more people to take part in them.’ So he opted for Seoul and Montreal (2014) and was a prizewinner in both: third prize in Seoul and second in Montreal. ‘The Montreal really helped me here in Canada. And then in the summer of that year, I decided to give it a go at the Chopin. I thought it was the last time I could do it. I was going to be 26 when it was due to take place. My success in the other two, and of course classes with Laplante, gave me courage.’

Throughout our chat, Richard-Hamelin always makes sure to mention every person who has helped his career. So he quickly adds: ‘Two other people were really instrumental in my preparation. One was Jean Saulnier, who is now a colleague of mine, a brilliant pedagogue and amazing teacher. The other was Janina Fialkowska, among whose mentors was Arthur Rubinstein. She was passing through Canada before the Chopin Competition and I picked her brains about a lot of things. And it was really amazing. We have kept in touch since then. She’s been a very important mentor of mine.’

He attributes his success partly to his stage experience in his homeland prior to the Competition. ‘Having won the Montreal prize gave me some presence on the Canadian scene. So I got to play under stressful circumstances. These were such a great help to prepare for something like Warsaw. Because most kids at the age of 18 or 19 prepare and practise like crazy. But going from playing for your teacher or your friends to Warsaw and being on the stage with Martha Argerich listening to you is a big step. It can be quite jarring.’

An important experience came in the shape of chamber music. ‘When I was at the Conservatoire aged about 23, I took some chamber music lessons, and the coach for our group was Anne Robert, a violin teacher and the founder of the longstanding Trio Hochelaga [the name derives from the First Nation name for Montreal].’ Robert heard Richard-Hamelin in Arensky’s D minor Trio, where he was replacing another pianist. She approached him afterwards and invited him to join her trio, which was in need of a replacement pianist at the time. ‘So I passed through this chair for two years and in those two years we played a lot around Quebec. I got to learn so much music. I was also over the moon because I could now pay my rent doing this. It wasn’t a huge fee, but I was kind of gaining a living as a professional musician, which was always my key thing: the dream.’

This sense of achievement played an important part in his confidence during the Warsaw Competition. ‘My attitude was it’s going to be fun to play Chopin in Warsaw and to take part in this amazing event and play on that stage where Pollini and Argerich had played. And that no matter what happens, I’ll go back home and have a lovely local musical life.’ He adds: ‘Nothing to lose is a very good attitude in such situations. I saw young candidates there whose entire dreams and persona were about winning the Competition. And of course, if you start with that mindset, you’re likely to fail, because the pressure becomes too immense. Also, I was completely unknown and from a country that back then was largely absent from the stages.’

Since 2015 there has been a wave of Canadian pianists winning major piano competitions. I ask him if he believes a Canadian school of piano playing is emerging. He laughs. ‘No, but those things don’t exist any more anyway. Of course, I think it’s a mixture of different things. We have in Canada great teachers throughout the country. You know, Kevin Chen, who won the Rubinstein, is from Calgary. His teacher was Marilyn Engle, who is amazing but very different from the folks at the Glenn Gould School of Music [in Toronto], for example. So there isn’t a single school, I think.’ He reflects a bit and continues: ‘But I guess there’s a thread, especially in Toronto and Montreal, which are maybe the dominant places. If you go back enough, you see that most of the teachers studied with Leon Fleisher or were in touch with him at some point, because Fleisher used to come to Toronto a lot. So I think his way of thinking is still dominant in teaching. A lot of what I teach and how I think of music comes from that school, which goes back to [Fleisher’s teacher] Schnabel. And then you can go back probably a few generations to Beethoven or something; I don’t think that really is of any use today, but it’s amusing.’

We talk about other Canadians currently on international stages. I share my experience of chatting to Bruce Liu and point to his ever-increasing online presence and fanbase. ‘He’s a very interesting pianist,’ Richard-Hamelin comments. ‘We did some competitions against each other in Canada. He’s younger, so I think he has an easier relationship with those [social media] tools. It’s different for me.’ I tell him that I admire his more light-touch approach to social media platforms. ‘You know, probably my manager doesn’t!’ he laughs. ‘They probably would prefer that I was more active. But you see, some of my musical role models are people like Radu Lupu. Can you imagine him advertising a concert on Instagram with his selfie? Or someone like Perahia?’ He sighs and continues: ‘But who knows, maybe even despite winning big competitions, they wouldn’t make it in this world today.’

We move on to piano idols. ‘Radu Lupu was for a long time my favourite living pianist. But of course he passed away recently.’ He reminiscences about hearing Lupu play live: ‘Each time was a revelation. I was a different person after each concert. Then of course Martha Argerich and her freedom. I especially remember hearing her in Chopin Ballades as a kid; that shaped a lot of the way I think Chopin should be played. But if we speak just of Chopin-playing, I’ve had so many influences that are so different. I think there’s as much temperament in Lipatti and Rubinstein, Friedman, Hofmann or even Cortot. You know, I pick what I like from each one. There’s so many things to learn from their recordings, how the same music can be played so differently and remain equally beautiful.’

And composers? ‘Chopin, of course. But after that I’d say Brahms and probably Mozart. When I was younger, I had a Scriabin phase when I just listened to everything he had composed.’ We chat about the dangers of Scriabin fever, from which I also suffered at some point. ‘You can go mad if you listen to that too long!’ He tells me that he played Scriabin for Berman: ‘I remember I played the Tenth Sonata. It’s incredible music, so visionary and original. It’s almost dangerous, like opium – you shouldn’t have too much of it!’

Before we conclude our delightful conversation, Richard-Hamelin’s face lights up as he tells me about another ongoing musical collaboration. ‘This year [in 2024] I’ve started this really great project with my namesake, the great Marc-André Hamelin.’ He is beaming. ‘We’ve played two-piano concerts in Canada and Japan this year. And we’ll most likely play again in 2026. That’s a dream come true. In the most crazy and impossible music, he was always the only one who could do it and do it so well. But he can do everything well, not just complicated music. He’s also the sweetest guy. Funny. We make each other laugh a lot, and it’s been a great privilege to share the stage with him.’

As I consider how to conclude this feature, the ideal solution pops up in the shape of an email from Marc-André himself: ‘It’s been a true pleasure to work with Charles; among pianists, I consider him the most interesting Canadian musician of his generation. He is an extraordinarily accomplished musician, with a particular kind of sensitivity that is certainly not limited to his Chopin interpretations, for which he is best known. He’s pianistically flawless, quick-witted, eager to share ideas, and without a trace of ego. You haven’t heard the last of us as a duo! And in a way, I wish he wererelated to me.’ IP

This feature originally appeared in the SPRING 2025 issue of International Piano