by Kevin McLaughlin
On Tuesday evening, October 21, pianist Marc-André Hamelin opened Tuesday Musical’s 2025–26 season in Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall with a program of unusual range and scale. He mapped the human mind and heart across an often-epic landscape — Beethoven’s granite Hammerklavier, Robert Schumann’s not merely scenic Waldszenen, and Ravel’s hallucinatory Gaspard de la nuit.
Composed between 1817 and 1818, the Hammerklavier marks Beethoven’s turn toward the monumental and visionary. Deaf by this time, he wrote for some idealized instrument and listener — music indifferent to ordinary technical or emotional limits. Deemed nearly unplayable at its premiere, it later found champions, Liszt foremost among them, who revealed its vast scope.
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