Charles Richard-Hamelin

Soloists and Duos   Artists with Orchestra  

Silver medalist and winner of the Krystian Zimerman Prize at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin has emerged as one of the most important pianists of his generation. Recipient of the Ordre des arts et des lettres...

Silver medalist and winner of the Krystian Zimerman Prize at the 2015 International Chopin Piano Competition, pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin has emerged as one of the most important pianists of his generation. Recipient of the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec and of the prestigious Career Development Award conferred by the Women’s Musical Club of Toronto, he was awarded the Prix Denise-Pelletier in November 2022, becoming the youngest recipient in the history of the Prix du Québec.

He has been invited to many major festivals such as La Roque d’Anthéron and the Nohant Festival in France, the Prague Spring Festival, the Chopin and his Europe Festival in Warsaw, the Lanaudière Festival and the George Enescu Festival in Bucarest. As a soloist, he has performed with many ensembles including the major Canadian symphony orchestras (Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Metropolitan, Quebec City, Edmonton, Calgary, etc.) as well as the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Korean Symphony Orchestra, OFUNAM (Mexico), Les Violons du Roy and I Musici de Montréal. He has worked with such renowned conductors as Kent Nagano, Rafael Payare, Bernard Labadie, Antoni Wit, Vasily Petrenko, Jacek Kaspszyk, Aziz Shokhakimov, Peter Oundjian, Jacques Lacombe, Fabien Gabel, Carlo Rizzi, John Storgårds, Alexander Prior, Giancarlo Guerrero, Christoph Campestrini, Lan Shui, Otto Tausk, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, Kazuki Yamada, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Jonathan Cohen. Charles Richard-Hamelin is also active as a chamber musician. He has performed with Andrew Wan, James Ehnes, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Marc-André Hamelin, the Dover Quartet, the New Orford Quartet, the Apollon Musagète Quartet and the Meccore Quartet, among others. A graduate of McGill University, the Yale School of Music and the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal, he studied with Paul Surdulescu, Sara Laimon, Boris Berman, André Laplante and Jean Saulnier.

Charles Richard-Hamelin has recorded eleven albums, all released on the Analekta label (Outhere Music). Five of these are dedicated primarily to the solo piano works of Frédéric Chopin; there are also four recordings with Andrew Wan, concertmaster of the OSM. He has also recorded concertante works: both Chopin piano concertos with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, conducted by Kent Nagano, and Mozart’s Piano Concertos nos. 22 and 24 with Les Violons du Roy, conducted by Jonathan Cohen. Six Félix awards (ADISQ) and a JUNO in 2022 saluted the quality of these albums, which have been received widespread acclaim from critics around the world.

© Julien Faugere

Projects

Charles Richard-Hamelin and Eric Lu

Reviews

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.

— Richard Haskell, The WholeNote

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. ★★★★★

— Charlotte Smith, BBC Music Magazine

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.

— Gramophone Magazine

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.

— Julian Haylock, BBC Music Magazine

Effortlessly beautiful playing from both performers coupled with exemplary recording quality makes for another outstanding release.

— Terry Robbins, The WholeNote

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.

— Presto Music, November 2022

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.

— Robert Rowat, CBC Music, April 2021

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.

— Gramophone, London (UK)

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.

— John Terrauds, The Star, Toronto

The young pianist’s strength, splendour and sense for emphasis were equally captivating as his enormous ability to convey dream, poetry and longing.

— Harald Eggebrecht, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich (Deutschland)

Charles Richard-Hamelin is clearly a musician-pianist: fluent, multi-faceted and tonally seductive […] Melodic inflection is curvaceous, natural and discreetly sensuous.

— Jeremy Siepmann, BBC Music Magazine

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.

— Gramophone, London (UK)

Videos

Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 - Medici.tv

Charles Richard-Hamelin plays Mozart - Les Violons du Roy

Mozart: OSM - Concerto No. 24

Chopin: Prélude No. 16

Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3

Chopin: 4 Impromptus

Chopin: Piano Concerto in F minor Op. 21

With A. Wan-Beethoven: Violin and Piano Sonata no.4, op.23

Chopin: Polonaise in F sharp minor Op. 44

Georges Enesco: Pavane

Photos

© Julien Faugere
© Julien Faugere
© Julien Faugère
© Julien Faugère
© Julien Faugère
© Elizabeth Delage
© Elizabeth Delage
© Elizabeth Delage

Calendar

April

6 April 2024
7 April 2024
10 April 2024
20 April 2024

Charles Richard-Hamelin - Le Baptème

Saguenay, Québec, Canada

May

10 May 2024
11 May 2024

Charles Richard-Hamelin - Théâtre du Lac-Brome

Ville de Lac-Brome, Québec, Canada
30 May 2024

Charles Richard-Hamelin - Shinsegae Namsan Trinity Hall

Seoul, Republic of Korea
31 May 2024

Charles Richard-Hamelin - Andong Culture And Art Center

Andong, Republic of Korea

June

1 June 2024

Charles Richard-Hamelin - Seoul Arts Center

Seoul, Republic of Korea
4 June 2024
6 June 2024
13 June 2024

Charles Richard-Hamelin - Hitomi Memorial Hall

Tokyo, Japan
26 June 2024

July

9 July 2024

Charles Richard-Hamelin - Concerts Lachine

Lachine, Québec, Canada
13 July 2024

August

11 August 2024
18 August 2024

September

26 September 2024

Contacts

Agent Canada, United States and Europe   Annick-Patricia Carrière 1 514-529-5717
Agent Asia   Elisabeth Comtois 1 514-273-3093