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Charles Richard-Hamelin makes The GRAMOPHONE: Listening Room

James Jolly's latest playlist includes a quartet of concertos – Chopin from Benjamin Grosvenor, Mozart from Charles Richard-Hamelin, Tjeknavorian Snr from Tjeknavorian Jnr, and Adès from Kirill Gerstein plus Lili Boulanger songs with Cyrille Dubois, and Walton sung by Carolyn Sampson – plus pre-release tracks by Matthias Goerne and Jan Lisiecki, Seong-Jin Cho, and the Czech Philharmonic

A traditional piano concerto comes courtesy of Mozart - his delicious E flat work, K482, with its wonderful finale. Charles Richard-Hamelin is the stylish soloist and Jonathan Cohen draws some flavoursome playing from Les Violons du Roi.

Released on the Analekta label, this is the first album collaboration between pianist Charles Richard-Hamelin and Les Violons du Roy, under the direction of Jonathan Cohen. Hamelin said;  "This project, which brings together two of my favourite Mozart concertos, was an unforgettable experience. Throughout the recording, I felt like I was doing chamber music with each member of Les Violons du Roy and their conductor, Jonathan Cohen. The piano concertos Nos. 22 and 24 complement each other beautifully, both from a formal and tonal perspective and in their highly different characters: if the concerto No. 22 is distinguished by its spirit and contagious vitality, the concerto No. 24 is an extremely powerful and tragic work. The fact that I wrote my own cadences for these two concertos adds a very personal touch to this production, which I am very pleased to present to you," affirms Charles Richard-Hamelin about this new album recorded at the Palais Montcalm in Quebec City and which is his sixth release.

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