United States Ives, Robert Schumann, Scriabin: Marc-André Hamelin (piano). Orchestra Hall, Chicago, 22.2.2026. (ZC)
Ives – Sonata No.2, ‘Concord, Mass., 1840–60’
R. Schumann – Fantasiestücke, Op.12
Scriabin – Piano Sonata No.4 in F-sharp major, Op.30
Canadian pianist and polymath Marc-André Hamelin has been one of a small handful of pianists pushing for the reconsideration of Charles Ives’s piano music, especially Sonata No.2, better known as the ‘Concord’. Whether his advocacy earns the piece a coveted spot in the standard piano repertory remains to be seen. For now, though, fans of Ives must grab the chance when they can to hear Hamelin play it.
One such opportunity arrived on 22 February when Hamelin performed the ‘Concord’ as part of the ‘Symphony Center Presents’ piano series. The Ives sat at the heart of the program he brought to Orchestra Hall, and at nearly an hour, it swallowed the entire first half. The second half was more approachable: Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke (‘Fantasy Pieces’) and Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.4 in F-sharp major. The program gave Hamelin a stage to do what he does best – championing strange, difficult music with the kind of playing that makes you wonder why anyone ignores it.
Ives’s ‘Concord’ opened the recital with a jolt, dropping the audience straight into his world of musical mashups. I think it was the right call. Ives’s music works like a collage: hymns, folk tunes, the sounds of New England life all thrown together. But he is not just assembling bits of Connecticut nostalgia for the fun of it. He is making music about spiritual yearning, beauty and humor, and about what his community and country actually mean to him. Buried inside all that noise are real statements about what it means to be American.
Hamelin, who has recorded the sonata twice, made a convincing case for it. The four movements are named for Transcendentalist figures: Emerson’, ‘Hawthorne’, ‘The Alcotts’ and ‘Thoreau’. Each lands differently. ‘Emerson’ is chaotic and wildly assembled, with phrases piling onto each other. ‘Hawthorne’ runs more like a scherzo, jagged and unsettled in a way that brought Ligeti’s harder etudes to mind. ‘The Alcotts’ pulls back into something warmer and more domestic, the most conventionally beautiful music in the piece. ‘Thoreau’ closes everything down with music turned so turned inward you almost forget how it all started. Running through the entire work is Beethoven’s ‘da-da-da-dum’ from the Fifth Symphony, not used with Beethoven’s bluntness but as something quieter and more aspirational. It also conveniently outlasted a cellphone that went off during ‘The Alcotts’.
Hamelin was remarkably lucid throughout, pulling melodies and motifs cleanly out of Ives’s tangled textures. In ‘Hawthorne’, he pushed hard through the movement without ever seeming to tire. ‘The Alcotts’ brought out some of the afternoon’s most luminous playing. And ‘Thoreau’ had an appropriately ruminative quality.
The second half of the concert belonged to Schumann and Scriabin. Schumann’s Fantasiestücke are eight short works that swing between his two extremes. One is the quiet, introspective side you hear in the opening nocturne, ‘In the Evening’, and the restless ‘Why?’ Its antipode is undoubtedly the unhinged energy of ‘Whims’ and a stormy ‘In the Night’. Hamelin handled both sides well, finding the right character and rhythmic give at each turn.
Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No.4 closed things out. Although just eight minutes long, it covers a lot of ground. Hamelin played the opening Andante with a dreamy, slightly ambiguous quality (close in feeling to what he had done in ‘The Alcotts’) before digging into the Prestissimo with real ferocity. Hamelin followed Scriabin’s sonata with two generous encores: ‘Jeux d’eau’ from Ravel’s Miroirs and No.5 from Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-tableaux, Op.39. A strong finish to a strong afternoon.
Hamelin’s performance didn’t settle the question of whether Ives’s ‘Concord’ will ever claim a permanent place in the standard repertory. That debate will continue. But on this Sunday afternoon, it felt like it was possible. If enough listeners encounter it in performances as committed as this one, Ives’s strange, beautiful vision of American Transcendentalism might finally find the wider audience it has always deserved.
Zach Carstensen