Hyperion Records has released a new video of Marc-André Hamelin performing his own work Hexensabbat, a virtuosic and darkly humorous piece inspired by the “Witches’ Sabbath” from Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. The video, published on Hyperion’s official YouTube channel, anticipates the pianist’s forthcoming album Found Objects / Sound Objects, due out on 31 October 2025.
In a note accompanying the video, Hamelin describes Hexensabbat as partly based on sketches from his student days, revisited years later after a commission from the Le Piano Symphonique festival in Lucerne. The piece was premiered there by pianist Yoav Levanon, whose performance Hamelin called “extremely committed and very energetic.”
The composer-pianist reveals that while he had Berlioz in mind during the composition, Hexensabbat does not quote Symphonie fantastique directly—except for the spectral presence of the Dies irae theme, heard in three simultaneous layers at different speeds. “For the very ending, the horror of it, I make no apologies,” Hamelin adds. “It seemed to me to be the only possible denouement.”
The work closes an adventurous album that brings together music by Frank Zappa, John Cage, Salvatore Martirano, John Oswald, Stefan Wolpe, Yehudi Wyner, and Hamelin himself—a characteristically bold journey through the outer edges of the piano repertoire.
🔗 Listen to the album on Hyperion
🎥 Watch the full video below.
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