Albums

2022
SCHUMANN: THE THREE VIOLIN SONATAS by Andrew Wan and Charles Richard-Hamelin
Label: Analekta
Cat number: AN29003
My contribution to this amazing production
Producer, Recording engineer and Mixing
Awards
Nomination
Nomination
Project

About this album

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.

Press & critics
  • CLASSICAJean Michel Molkhou

    "Andrew Wan et Charles Richard-Hamelin, duo canadien déjà signataire chez le même éditeur d’une intégrale des sonates de Beethoven, démontrent cohésion, inspiration et dynamisme."

  • DIAPASONPatrick Szersnovicz

    "Un style châtié, avec un vrai sens des détails, des nuances comme de la grande ligne."

  • GRAMOPHONE

    "They clearly work well together as a duo, in responsive and well-coordinated readings of all three works. The playfulness they locate in the finale of the enigmatic Third Sonata is worthy of note, and elsewhere they don’t underplay the many facets of this music, ranging from the unease of the First Sonata’s opening movement to the miraculous stasis of the Second’s chorale variations."

  • LE DEVOIR

    "Ce Schumann opère un recadrage sonore bienvenu par rapport aux Beethoven avec un son plus « chambriste », un peu plus sec et direct. Le disque bénéficie de l’ajout de la Sonate WoO 27 par rapport aux deux sonates traditionnelles."

  • CBC

    "They bring urgency to the sonatas' outer movements, a sepia tone to the fragile music box of the D minor sonata's third movement, and magically suspend time in the third sonata's impossibly beautiful intermezzo."

  • BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE

    "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."

  • MUSIKANSICH.DEGeorg Henkel

    "Mit der Klassizität Beethovens in den Fingern gelingt es ihnen, die experimentellen hochromantischen Werke Schumanns eindrücklich zu Gehör zu bringen. Schumanns Musik blickt auf Beethoven zurück und verflüssigt zugleich die formale Strenge der älteren Generation zugunsten einer freischweifenden Fantasie, die mitunter fast collagenhaft wirkt."