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Editorial Review Book Description
In The Composer-Pianists: Hamelin and The Eight, Robert Rimm writes about eight legendary, enigmatic, and interrelated composer-pianists of the instrument's golden age and goes on to consider their present-day advocate and astounding interpreter Marc-Andre Hamelin, whose dynamic playing and engaging personality immediately impressed Rimm upon their first encounter. Rimm portrays The Eight (Alkan, Busoni, Feinberg, Godowsky, Medtner, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, and Sorabji) as the piano's aural sensualists and explores the relationships among their music, their music-making, their ideas, and their lives. HARDCOVER. ... Read more Customer Reviews (6) 
A very fine book...
These kinds of books are often dry, but here we have an accessible, beautifully written volume about some of music's most original thinkers.Each insightful chapter is supported by letters and quotes from the composer-pianists themselves.I particularly appreciated the many Russian sources Rimm has uncovered, through archival materials and interviews.Hamelin provides terrific commentary, and the book also includes in-depth interviews with Stephen Hough, Radu Lupu, Zoltan Kocsis and Krystian Zimerman.
a plug
--you DO need to know a lot about the composers rimm writes about to enjoy this book--but ENJOY is the word--the book is written more as on-purpose belles lettres than encyclopedia entry, much less introduction musicology, and I find rimm's writing a lot of the time poetic and funny--but that's not the problem
--this book has stirred up a lot of hostility towards rimm's collaborator marc hamelin, one of the great pianists, because the problem is that marc is presented as expert in BOTH parts of the artist-type composer pianist--marc's contribution to the book on the subject of the life of a working virtuoso pianist is EXPERT (i mean what else would it be)--his contribution on the subject of the working life of a composer is...LOL why get nasty
--instead a plug--STEPHEN HOUGH is no slouch as a working virtuoso pianist--HIS contribution to Rimm's book gets squeezed out in a page-and-half forward BUT i'm plugging that this guy has been composing some pretty AMAZING transcriptions for his instrument--check out his dropdead march of siamese children (KING AND I) on his piano album 2--go on from there
A wonderful exploration of the composer-pianist tradition
This exceptional book provides a crucial reference, not only to individual biographies of eight composer-pianists the likes of Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Medtner, Busoni, Godowsky and others, but in how Rimm groups them in pairs. One reads comparisons and contrasts between and among them in a way that provides historical context to the vital composer-pianist tradition. As a pianist who has played many works by these composers, I found stylistic and emotional insights page after page. The chapter on musical criticism is another highlight, with its wry look at the sometimes ephemeral perspectives of music critics, with some very funny and also unfortunate examples. The inclusion of Marc-André Hamelin was a brilliant stroke. Rimm doesn't begin to suggest that he is in the same compositional league as the others, but Hamelin, one of the world's foremost pianists, provides invaluable au courant perspective and context. The companion CD from Hyperion is also a gem.
A fascinating book
At first, I wondered why Chopin and Liszt weren't included in a book called "The Composer-Pianists," but these eight form a closely interrelated league all their own. By extensively quoting their letters, diaries and writings as they relate both to themselves and to each other (including intriguing material from Russia apparently never before translated), Rimm illuminates their thoughts, motivations, desires and methods. Although Hamelin is not widely known as a composer, he is recognized around the world as among their foremost interpreters. Who else has in his/her repertoire all the Medtner and Scriabin sonatas, the Chopin-Godowsky etudes, the Godowsky Passacaglia, the Alkan Concerto and solo-piano Symphony, the Busoni Concerto, et al., and at such an Olympian level of technical achievement and musical eloquence? I've heard several of Hamelin's compositions both in recital and on recordings, and he demonstrates polyphonic and pianistic sorcery (with transcriptions as well) that clearly echo The Eight. As Rimm posits, though, it remains to be seen whether Hamelin will occupy a lasting place compositionally. He also offers a perspective toward the future with names like Kocsis, Pletnev, Hough and others. (Incidentally, Stephen Hough has written a fine foreword to this book.)
Rimm's chapter on transcriptions, a large part of The Eight's performances and compositions, should be required reading for anyone interested in the transcriber's art, and the chapter on musical criticism is both sharply observed and funny. Whether one hears music in terms of eroticism is fairly subjective (and I don't), Rimm cites numerous examples from most of these composers, especially Scriabin, that indicate direct expression of eroticism and sensuality through their music.
Well written and comprehensively researched, including photographs and letters not otherwise accessible, this book may well contribute to the renaissance of Medtner, Alkan, Busoni and Godowsky. Hamelin surely has!
a couple of facts
Fact #1: Rimm is a mediocre writer at his best, and consistently quite poor as an expositor: if you come to this book already knowing the biographies and compositions of "the eight" you will be able to read him with an awareness of what he's trying to say; if you don't already know basic biographical facts about Rimm's "eight" you will often be at sea in his narrative.
Fact # 2: Hamelin is a pianist of unique technical gifts who wastes those gifts by using too much sustain pedal to achieve multi-voice effects, but leave Hamelin the pianist out of it for the moment: Hamelin is an amateur composer, he is in middle age now and so far he has composed several little pieces for the piano: some etudes, a prelude & fugue, a transcription of Rossini, unpublished so far, but all "composed", according to Rimm, with great and long effort... Well, to place Hamelin and his little, laborious output, as Rimm does, in the class of Alkan, Busoni and the others is a mind-boggling, grotesque absurdity.That Hamelin seems not to have objected to such comparison reflects badly on him.A reviewer, who refers to Hamelin as "Marc", writes that Rimm is a friend of Hamelin.Maybe that explains things.
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