Charles Richard-Hamelin, Les Violons du Roy & Jonathan Cohen
Biographie Charles Richard-Hamelin, Les Violons du Roy & Jonathan Cohen
Charles Richard-Hamelin
stands out on the international music scene as a “highly sensitive” pianist (Gramophone), driven by “a great depth of feeling without the slightest condescension” (Le Devoir). He is recognized as “fluent, multifaceted and tonally seductive… a technician of exceptional elegance and sophistication” (BBC Music Magazine).
In 2015, he received the Silver Medal at the International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and the Krystian Zimerman Prize for best performance of a sonata. He also won Second Prize at the Concours musical international de Montréal and Third Prize and the Special Prize for best performance of a Beethoven sonata at the Seoul International Music Competition in South Korea. Charles Richard-Hamelin is in great demand as a guest performer at the world’s greatest classical music festivals, including the International Piano Festival of La Roque d’Anthéron in France, the Prague Spring International Music Festival, the International “Chopin and his Europe” Festival in Warsaw, the Festival International de Lanaudière and the George Enescu Festival in Bucharest. He has worked with renowned conductors, including Kent Nagano, Vasily Petrenko, Jacek Kaspszyk, Aziz Shokhakimov, Peter Oundjian, Jacques Lacombe, Fabien Gabel, Carlo Rizzi, Alexander Prior, Christoph Campestrini, Lan Shui, Jean- Marie Zeitouni, Charles Olivieri-Munroe, Howard Shelley, Antoni Wit and Jonathan Cohen. He has also performed as a soloist with famous orchestras around the world, including the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Québec, Toronto, Edmonton, Warsaw, Singapore and Hiroshima symphony orchestras, as well as the Orchestre Métropolitain, Les Violons du Roy, I Musici de Montréal, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, OFUNAM (Mexico City), the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra, the Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra and Sinfonia Varsovia.
Charles Richard-Hamelin has recorded five albums to this day, all published on the Analekta label. In 2015, he first recorded acclaimed performances of Chopin’s last works. Launched in 2016, his second album brought together works by Beethoven, Enescu and Chopin, recorded in concert at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City. His discography was then further enriched by two more albums, one devoted to the first part of a complete collection of Beethoven’s violin and piano sonatas, recorded with the concertmaster of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Andrew Wan; the other dedicated to Chopin’s two piano concertos, recorded live in concert at Montréal’s Maison symphonique with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal under the direction of Kent Nagano. These albums received awards and enthusiastic reviews from the leading music critics.