Lintu, Hewitt return to the BSO

Conductor Hannu Lintu

Hannu Lintu is not concerned much with subtlety. The Finnish conductor, who last appeared with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2013, tends toward out-sized, expressive gestures. In his latest program with the band from Charm City, heard on Saturday night in the Music Center at Strathmore, broad strokes most suited him, especially in a hard-lined performance of Dvořák's eighth symphony.

The high point of the evening was a performance of Cantus Arcticus by the late Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. The piece was composed in the 1970s, and it feels like it, in an Age of Aquarius kind of way. Its principal gesture, incorporating slightly manipulated recordings of birds taken by the composer in the Arctic Circle, was nothing new, going back to Respighi's Pines of Rome and to countless compositions before the advent of recording. Most bird calls are atonal, of course, and consist essentially of clusters, which Rautavaara captures in the instrumental writing for paired flutes and paired trumpets. Nothing much happens over the course of twenty minutes, but the atmospheric effect of the piece is quite pleasing.

Angela Hewitt's last concerto appearance in the area was an underwhelming Mozart concerto with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2014. Results were better this time around in Beethoven's first concerto, heard just earlier this month from Emanuel Ax and the NSO. Hewitt dialed back the tempo of the first movement especially, creating a mellow feel, even in the extended cadenza, conceived more as gentle spirals than violent zig-zags. The second movement was expressive and the best coordinated of the three between Lintu and Hewitt, with a peppy finale to tie things up. The staid crowd did not cheer loudly enough to warrant the encore Hewitt reportedly played at other performances.

Lintu's Sibelius has been much to my liking over the years, and the Rautavaara had many of the same qualities. His Dvořák, by contrast, felt strident and forced, especially the berserk drive of the finale. It was crack ensemble playing, held together by Lintu's fastidious and severe pacing, but it felt breathless and harried, and not in a good way. Impressive, certainly, but somehow too impatient.

Angela Hewitt: Art of Fugue

Bach, Keyboard Works (15 CDs), A. Hewitt Rameau, Keyboard Suites, A. Hewitt Couperin, Keyboard Music, Vol. 2, A. Hewitt

This review is an Ionarts exclusive. This article has been corrected since publication.

When Angela Hewitt comes to the area, Ionarts is there -- in 2009, 2006, and 2003. Right on schedule, the Canadian pianist, an Ionarts favorite in Bach and other Baroque music, came to Baltimore's Shriver Hall on Sunday afternoon. We are lucky, as it turns out, that she made it: after a performance in Nashville in early March, Hewitt underwent some emergency surgery, a situation that she naturally prefers to keep private but that was scary enough for her to comment on in a recent statement on her Web site. Her recovery, fairly arduous, forced her to cancel recitals in Copenhagen, Birmingham, and Berlin, and concerto appearances in Brussels and Ankara, after which she returned to her planned schedule in Dublin on March 30. She made no mention of her ordeal on Sunday, and it reportedly had nothing to do with a change in the programming of this recital, with Rameau (alas) replaced by some 19th-century French music (the confusion over the program announced was due to a miscommunication). My disappointment at the lost of the Rameau suite is not out of disrespect for Fauré or Ravel, but because my chances to hear Rameau's keyboard music live are so depressingly rare.

A François Couperin set was limited to four selections from the composer's Sixième Ordre, arranged in a sort of mini-suite. These pieces were impeccable in the way one expects of Hewitt: crisp ornaments, gorgeously shaped phrasing, variation of dynamics and articulation. Putting the lie to the sometimes repeated assumption that all Baroque music sounds the same, Hewitt drew a different character from each movement, with a languid Les Langueurs (so much made of so little on the page), an understated way with the famous Les Barricades Misterieuses, and a rug-cutting Le Moucheron -- a gnat dancing a jig. Bach's fifth French suite (G major, BWV 816) was likewise a marvel, with charming embellishments adorning the repeats, even in the spirited, bouncy Gigue. The Sarabande was exquisitely turned, perhaps wallowing just a bit too much in the details, but the buoyant Gavotte, light with the sense of dancers' leaps on the strong beats, was about as perfect as it could be.

After her surgery, Hewitt has written that she did not touch the piano for over a week, coming back to practicing eventually by taking her first look at the score of The Art of the Fugue, which is planned for performances at Royal Festival Hall next season. We had a sneak preview of her thoughts about the piece because she played the first four contrapunctus movements, and my advance response is that it is going to be very good indeed. In brief comments, she admitted that she thought that the sections of this complicated piece would all sound the same. With that in mind, she quickly dispelled that assumption with four different styles of performance in these movements: a jaunty no. 2; a tortured, wandering no. 3; a whimsical no. 4 dotted with the little two-note motif she identified, quite convincingly, as a cuckoo's call.

The rest of the program was given over to Hewitt's recent fascination with 19th-century French music, which will be the subject of the disc she plans to record in August. She made Fauré's Thème et Variations in C-sharp minor, op. 73, a rather odd and rambling piece, into something delectable, especially the slow, delicate inner variations. Even better, because it is stronger music, was Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, an evocation of the French Baroque to which Hewitt applied her whole bag of Baroque tricks. The Prélude was fleet, vanishing in a puff of sound, and she did nothing to exaggerate the delicious, extravagant harmonies of the odd Forlane, thinking first of the sense of the dance. A feisty Rigaudon and a cool, unemotional Minuet led to an athletic Toccata that nevertheless revealed a few unexpected slips in Hewitt's technique. One is so used to everything being just so and in place with Hewitt's playing, but she is not the sort of power player who can flash her way through a piece like this on nothing but adrenaline. (Lingering after-effects of her surgery could also be an issue.) With the encore, Debussy's omnipresent Clair de lune, from the Suite Bergamasque, we were back in the realm of the expertly carved miniature, which makes the prospect of a Hewitt Debussy disc, planned for release sometime in the fall, a palatable one.

Next season's series of concerts at Shriver Hall will feature the Brentano Quartet (October 14), Europa Galante and Fabio Biondi (November 4), pianists Piotr Anderszewski (December 2) and Marc-André Hamelin (January 27), mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená and pianist Yefim Bronfman (February 17), violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (March 3), violinist Alina Ibragimova with pianist Cédric Tiberghien (March 16), the Pavel Haas Quartet (April 7), and cellist Alban Gerhardt with pianist Cecile Licad (May 5).

Angela Hewitt's Haydn and Handel

Handel / Haydn, A. Hewitt (released on September 8, 2009) Hyperion CDA67736 | 67'25"

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt is one of my favorite performers when I want to hear Baroque music, and especially Bach, played immaculately on the modern piano (she prefers a Fazioli). She has done it again with this recent disc combining some keyboard selections of Handel with Haydn's F minor variations and the piano sonata Hob. XVI:52. For the Handel suites, my first recommendation would still be for harpsichord, as in the new set of the eight "Great" harpsichord suites by Jory Vinikour for Delos, reviewed in honor of the Handel anniversary last year. At the same time, we have no problem with hearing Handel played on the piano and, as with her other recordings of Baroque music, Hewitt creates a version that manages both to sound authentic and to be highly idiosyncratic, bearing her own stamp in terms of variation of tempo and attack. Hewitt has written her own liner essay for the booklet, which depending on your temperament, you may not want to read.

What it reveals is an approach that is not as scholarly as you might expect from Hewitt: in it she notes that the Bärenreiter edition records a different conclusion to the G major chaconne recorded here (HWV 435). Preferring the edition she learned in her youth, she chooses to play it instead, and well she should. As she also notes, Trevor Pinnock plays the critical edition in his recording: she is aware of the research and the differences of the editions, and she is not presenting her recording as anything but what she likes to play. She also seems to have no trouble making other changes, adding octaves to the left hand in places to give a fuller sound, for example. Hewitt's Haydn is no less pleasing, with the filigree runs in the F minor variations, played so memorably by Alfred Brendel at his Washington farewell recital, light as a Rococo feather. Yes, I would still rather have my Haydn on a fortepiano, as heard from Kristian Bezuidenhout at the Library of Congress a couple years ago, but nothing wrong with hearing the sonatas from more pianists (a disc from Rafał Blechacz was the most recent example of the sonata recorded by Hewitt, no. 52).

Angela Hewitt: Passionate Bach

We welcome this review from guest contributor Rachel L. Conrad.

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt gave another fine performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 ("Goldberg Variations") on Thursday evening in the Music Center at Strathmore, a program presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society on its Piano Masters Series. As in her last local performance of the work, at the National Gallery of Art in 2004, Bach's aria and set of thirty variations provided the opportunity for the performer to demonstrate why she is unanimously praised for her interpretations of Bach's keyboard works (see previous thoughts at Ionarts on her performances of the English suites, the concerti, and other composers). In short, the MIDEM Classical Awards 2010 Instrumentalist of the Year displayed the clarity and finesse that audiences have come to expect of her.

It is not merely in the realm of technical mastery that Ms. Hewitt excels. Rather, it is through her deep connection and sensitivity to the musical spirit of the composer (hear her speak about the Goldberg Variations in her WPAS podcast) that she is able to breathe life into a performance of this pianistic tour de force, played without any intermission. Any concern that the delicacy of this piece might be shattered in the grandiose setting of a concert hall was quickly dispelled. From the first utterance of the Aria, one was drawn in by every nuanced whisper, the sense of intimacy heightened by the determined concentration of the performer. Ms. Hewitt’s gestures ranged from a poised elegance as she glided through the most demanding passages, to moments of subtle expressiveness where she leaned in closely to the keyboard, as if a secret were being shared between performer and instrument.

Other Reviews: Cecelia Porter, At Strathmore, a harmonious and deftly done variation on 'Goldberg' (Washington Post, December 5)

A palpable tremor of anticipation wavered in the atmosphere of the hall as the final note of the last variation, held to its dying gasp, capitulated to the mournful refrain of the Aria. The program concluded with a final bow of Ms. Hewitt to the keyboard, a graceful gesture of homage to Bach, followed by a single encore, an arrangement of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, ending with warmth what otherwise would have been a bleak December evening.

The remaining WPAS classical concert of the year is this afternoon, a recital by Plamena Mangova (December 5, 2 pm) in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. The payoff for daring the Washington roads during the first wintry day will be the chance to hear this promising Bulgarian pianist, who won a prize at the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in 2007, the year that Anna Vinnitskaya took first prize.

Angela Hewitt Lectures Us on Bach

Some artists make it really easy to fall in love with them. Angela Hewitt is one such artist. Grace, wit, ease, and skill somehow come together in a way that makes for an immediate, visceral response to her music-making, in concert and on disc alike. Not because she is a ‘more superior’ pianist. (There are plenty keyboard artists who have an ever greater technique or are more powerful, play a broader repertoire, or have more obvious flair.) But because of an air she exudes that I guess to be a particular combination of musicality, integrity, and the inherent joy she takes in it all.

Angela Hewitt, Bach Performance on the Piano, DVD (released March 11, 2008) Hyperion DVD A68001

As she seems to be tackling composer by letter (Bach, now Beethoven, Chopin, Chabrier, and Couperin, Ravel and Rameau), I follow with interest and delight, happily collecting her recordings and enjoying her recitals when I catch them. When I first heard her in the Goldberg Variations (at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington), I even allowed the inner groupie to get out and go for her autograph. When I heard her – of all things – play the Brahms f-minor sonata, it was far-and-away the most enjoyable and impressive of all technically lacking performances I’ve witnessed.

Bach, Well Tempered Clavier, Books I & II Bach, French Suites Bach, English Suites Bach, The Six Partitas Bach, 2 & 3-Part Inventions, Chromatic F'n'F, et al. Bach, French Overture, Italian Concerto, et al. Bach, Toccatas Bach, Keyboard Concertos (vol.1 & 2) Bach, F'n'F in A minor, Aria Variata, Sonata in D major, Suite in F minor Bach, Goldberg Variations

Now Hyperion has released a DVD of Angela Hewitt lecturing on “Bach Performance on the Piano” timed to coincide with her Well Tempered Clavier World Tour. Erudite, experienced, charming, and clearly one of the foremost Bach pianists of our time, who could be more qualified to talk about Phrasing, Tone, Articulation, Fingering, Pedaling, Tempos, Dynamics, Rhythmic Alterations, Ornamentation, and Editions for and of Bach’s work? Or so I would have thought.

But if you feel anything like I do about Hewitt, and you don’t want that to change, I must recommend you stay away from this DVD. Not that her insights on the topics above – which are the chapters into which the lecture DVD is divided – are not interesting and helpful to layperson and Bach-performer alike. Angela Hewitt’s scholarship is (almost) beyond reproach, even where her opinions are strong and definitive. (And would we really expect less from a performing artist?) But her tone of lofty condescension and unwillingness to really accept anything but her own view of matters will be unbearable to many, if not most, viewers.

The entire effort is more the scholarly type, aimed at helping players improve their Bach skills, warn them of the pitfalls, coaxing them into performing Bach the “right way”. Those of us who do not hope to attain or regain the skill to play but the most simple of Bach pieces are to come away from this with a greater appreciation of what all goes into a Bach performance. A glimpse into the complexities beyond the notes. The two and a half hour lecture probably achieves both. All the more lamentable is it that the production of this DVD is so amateurish in so many aspects.

Filmed in the Fazioli Pianoforti factory (talk about product placement!), the camerawork is professional enough. Not so, the sound. Especially in the segment with Daniel Müller-Schott (who has recently released the Gamba Suites with Hewitt on Orfeo) the two artists’ voices, grunts, and vocal nods of agreement are all caught on the audio track well beyond what would be natural. Their painfully awkward interaction (stiff and shy, Müller-Schott comes across as a little, über-proper school-boy, eagerly and uncritically absorbing every word of the High-Priestess of Bach) is enhanced by the absence of good editing.

But the worst element of this DVD is surely Angela Hewitt’s manner of speech. Everything seems overly rehearsed and all-too carefully prepared. It becomes increasingly ironic how everything she teaches and tells us about good Bach performance and amply present in her supreme Bach playing is precisely and obviously lacking in her oratory skills. Like a student reciting a poem he or she has memorized, but never internalized, Hewitt’s lecture comes across as stilted and self-conscious. It is precisely the un-spontaneous nature of here phrasing, tone, articulation, and rhythmic alterations that is the detriment of this lecture. She is never relaxed, always achingly sincere in her modification and enunciation of the text. As a result, it feels denatured. A stock of ten different facial expressions is employed to underline points and ‘liven it up’. But the repetition becomes near comical. Eyebrows up, blink-blink-blink, head tilt, switch to the other side of her profile, blink-blink-blink, portentous pause. Da capo ad infinitum. Add to that that watching Mme. Hewitt perform from an up-close, frontal perspective, is about as appealing as seeing Cecilia Bartoli sing when the camera zooms in. Every note gets its own, felt expression.

I don’t doubt for a second that Angela Hewitt’s expressions are anything less than 100% genuine – much like Bernstein’s, who just couldn’t help moving his entire body along when he conducted. But it can be rather distracting – even if Hewitt defends this as a necessity (!) in playing music, quoting C.P.E. Bach to that extend, and declaring that any pianist performing on the piano only from the elbows down could not possibly touch the audience’s emotions. Anyone who has ever been moved by a Rubinstein performance -- and perhaps not by a Lang Lang performance -- will want to shyly raise their hand in objection. (Don't worry, she won't likely acknowledge you.)

“Carefully crafted chapters” on these various topics is what the back-cover promises – and it is what the viewer gets: All too carefully crafted, alas. Compare to that the relaxed, inviting, and charming (though no less opinionated) lectures of András Schiff on Beethoven’s sonatas. (Available to on The Guardian Unlimited website.) I was able to make it through the Introduction, “The Essentials”, “Interpretation”, “The Dance in Bach”, and the first few subsections of “Learning a Fugue”. After that I turned the picture off and merely listened to the audio track of “Ornamentation” and “Practical Advice”. Although that still didn’t turn Mme. Hewitt into an enigmatic speaker, it was a marked improvement.

For its educational purpose, this DVD – which comes with a second DVD of filmed performances of Partita No.4, the Italian Concerto, and the Chromatic Fantasy (expertly played and tastefully caressed as one would expect) – might have its merit. But especially as an admirer of Angela Hewitt, I cannot, indeed: must not recommend this DVD.

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DVD 1: Bach Performance on the Piano – An Illustrated Lecture DVD 2: Angela Hewitt Live in Concert
Partita No.4 in D-major, BWV 828 (1726) [33:07]
Italian Concerto in F-major, BWV 971 (1735) [13:38]
Chromatic Fantasia & Fugue in d-minor, BWV 903 (1720) [13:02]
Hyperion DVD A68001

Angela Hewitt; She of Supreme Tastefulness

Angela Hewitt is not only a favorite at Ionarts Central: her Bach (and beyond) is always respected , often beloved, by the many listeners and critics who have come to hear these, for the most part, very successful albums on Hyperion covering the entire Bach output for solo keyboard (see our recent review of her English Suites). With the concertos under her belt as well, she now turns her eye to other composers – Chopin, Couperin (v.1, v.2) and Chabrier as of late. A contemporary of François Couperin (1668 – 1733), Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 – 1764) is next – and it was his suite in a-minor that opened her recital at Shriver Hall in Baltimore last Sunday.

Bach on the piano is a debate no longer worth any serious music lover’s time. Ditto for Domenico Scarlatti who – save for a few effects – works equally well on either piano or harpsichord also. When it comes to French Baroque music for the keyboard, the opinions are – for now, at any rate – fairly unanimous: most of it is not helped by the modern piano; much of it diminished. I don’t suppose that Angela Hewitt would necessarily disagree with that. There is a reason why she – now on her third volume of Couperin keyboard music – very judiciously chooses what to tackle with the piano and what to leave the harpsichord’s prerogative rather than aiming for a “complete works” recording, insensitive to the musical material’s demands.

The a-minor suite was a microcosm of that conundrum. Although every part was finely played, delicately nuanced, tactfully enunciated, there were parts that audibly adapted better to the Shriver Hall’s Steinway than others. The opening Allemande (stalking somewhat through its own beauty) and following Courante (its trills and ornaments isolated on an empty plain; with several moments far from smooth) were among the latter. The Sarabande in its rolling, stately nobility and the rollicking La Triomphante as well as the discursive, long Gavotte et Doubles (what a supreme finale!) among the former. Since those parts came after Allemande and Courante and were not stopped in their cumulative power by Les Trois Mains and Fanfarinette, the impact was tremendous; seeing Ms. Hewitt work the keys in this repertoire delicious in its own right.

J. S. Bach, French Suites, Angela Hewitt J. S. Bach, Toccatas, Angela Hewitt J. S. Bach, The Six Partitas, Angela Hewitt J. S. Bach, Inventions, Chromatic F'n'F, Fantasia in c-minor, Angela Hewitt

Her Bach -- joyous, unindulgent, light (but never “precious”), floating -- needs little introduction. At her best she is to be preferred over the excellent Murray Perahia (who has done far too little Bach!) and reliable András Schiff. At her least successful she is just a touch behind Schiff and still ahead of the rest. Glenn Gould, who ranges from the madly inspired (Goldberg Variations) to plain awful (Toccatas) runs outside the competition, anyway… but there would be little of Gould I’d ever recommend over Hewitt. Partita No. 4 in D-major (BWV 828) was the particular example in this recital, and her subtleties, her touch, the shifts in dynamics (small but immediately impressing character) just about sublime. She was not far from inducing tears of touched joy with just half a dozen notes played in just the way she does. I suppose that is what it means when a pianist is said to be able to “tell a story with two notes.” Yet – and I am grateful for that – hers was not an emotional performance, which is a style that simply would not be Hewitt’s. It is that mixture of delicacy with spine and determination that makes her Bach so often so appealing; her grace and rigor. Kitten here, princess there, tomboy around the corner. The result is beauty that makes no claims to Baroque “authenticity” nor ever evokes the impression of “interpretation”.

Brahms’s sonatas can’t be said to elicit particular anticipation on my part – nor would I necessarily associate Angela Hewitt with that repertoire. That said, she’s certainly not a specialist pianist, despite all that Bach, and of those sonatas, the F minor work still holds the most appeal for me. And sure enough, Ms. Hewitt proved her chops in the storm-brewing Allegro maestoso that swerves so gently back to tenderness and then grandeur again. Here, Hewitt’s knack for seamless transitions and calm amid tempestuous moments brought about immediate and most rewarding returns; returns that note-perfection could hardly have yielded. Of course there are few works where technical perfection outweighs sheer musicality (Alkan, Godowsky, sometimes Liszt) and far more where, without a particularly deft touch, the music cannot take off. Hence it takes a Radu Lupu or Julius Katchen to turn much of the Brahms piano compositions into obviously great music – and similarly it was Hewitt’s ability to shade and contrast that made Brahms a joy and the listener overlook the good amount of slips.

Indeed, with her un-self-conscious tonal delicacy and variety, my ears were willing to forgive far more and far more readily than when Fleisher tackled the great Schubert B-flat at Shriver last month. Although the sonata's peak outbreaks were clipped at the top (like an amplifier would, when output signal attempts to exceed the supply voltage), the in-between, the valleys of piano and pianissimo and the ascent to ff and descent back to pp had me in rapture. Her Brahms thus became a living memorial to music being quite its own category of expression and quality; far away from being an Olympian sport where “faster, higher, further” would be all that mattered – even if that is often how musical virtuosos are marketed these days. All Beckmessers begone: this was simply superb!

So thought the audience, too: Ms. Hewitt was cajoled into giving an encore: the Andante from the Sonata in d-minor, BWV 964; a ‘beaut’ and a fitting nightcap on one of the two best piano recitals this season. (Although this evening will hopefully add another – when Maurizio Pollini comes to Strathmore.)

Additional Comments by Charles T. Downey: With her tall, thin frame sheathed in a soft blue gown revealing her shoulders, Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt played in her rather gestural style (lots of balletic whirling of arms), and her face often accompanied final or significant musical gestures with expressions of surprise, empathy, and even ecstasy (see photo at left). Far from being distracting, I found her mannerisms to be nothing more than the expression of her sincere feeling for the music she was playing. Hewitt opened with a programming choice that immediately won me over, as a musicologist obsessed with the French Baroque era. Jean-Philippe Rameau published this A minor suite in his third book of keyboard pieces, intended for the harpsichord, in 1728. This was one of the two suites included on Alexandre Tharaud's 2002 recording of Rameau's keyboard music (paired there with Debussy's Hommage à Rameau), which we will be reviewing soon at Ionarts. Indeed, Angela Hewitt will be recording this suite and two others by Rameau in June for a new recording to be released next year. That fluttering sound you hear is a musicologist's heart floating to heaven. Major concert artists are playing Rameau's music. Hewitt's allemande was gentle, whirring with the cloud of agréments in Rameau's score. The composer included so many probably as a way to extend the harpischord's fragile sound, and it is often difficult to render delicately on the stronger piano. Hewitt struck the perfect solution, including all or at least the lion's share of the ornaments but without them drawing attention to themselves for the most part. The arching sequences and harmonic virtuosity of the allemande bring to mind Rameau's other role as daunting music theorist. One of the more challenging parts of the suite is the playful fourth movement ("Les Trois Mains"), in which the left hand crosses frequently above the right to make a guest appearance as a phantom "third hand." This was exceedingly well played, as was the folksy fifth movement ("Fanfarinette"), thick with ornamentation. Only the sixth movement ("La Triomphante") sounded rocky, perhaps at a tempo slightly too fast to accommodate the ornamentation and imitative demands. Hewitt wisely played it without repeats. There is one overpowering reason to play this suite, and that is for the final movement, a dreamy gavotte, and its six doubles, embellished versions or full variations. Hewitt excels in this kind of music, ranging from delicate to full (but rarely over the top), with knotted inner lines that require the untangling power of her capable hands. In one double, the thumb and lower fingers of her right hand skated super-legato through roulades of sixteenth notes, while the upper fingers of the same hand flawlessly sounded the melody. In another double her right hand floated above her left, sounding repeated notes in a graceful choreography. She had most of the power needed for the final double, Rameau's attempt to get an orchestral sound from the keyboard. After this beautiful performance, I can say with confidence that I am looking forward to her Rameau disc.

Angela Hewitt's English Suites

Available at Amazon: J. S. Bach, English Suites (BWV 806-811), Angela Hewitt, piano (released on October 14, 2003)

One thing that a listener can learn from a live performance -- and not from a recording, at least not as well -- is something about a performer's character. Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt is a deliberate player, and cautious might not be too strong a word except for the negative connotation it has for a virtuoso, which is not what I intend. In her 2003 recording of Bach's English Suites (see also Andrew McGregor's review for the BBC, from 2003), her tempi are often one notch to the reserved side of the metronome bar, speeds that allow her to focus all of her considerable skill on individuating voices, crafting delicate ornamentation, and carefully shading textures. In painting terms, Hewitt is creating the fine details of a small-format Dutch landscape or still life, not splattering paint on large canvases like Delacroix or Pollack. Both approaches can make for superlative listening.

This is not to say that Hewitt does not play some very fast movements (like the rollicking gigue of the fourth suite), but even those are not precipitous as you sometimes hear in Gould's recordings or Hamelin's. More often than not, Hewitt hits precisely upon that tempo giusto for a Bach movement, and makes up for an occasional lack of excitement with an impressive control. No detail of the score -- hints of thematic fragments, references to other genres, textural shifts -- escapes her attention. Take a listen for yourself to these excerpt tracks from Hyperion.

Angela Hewitt on Ionarts: Jens F. Laurson, Angela Hewitt at the National Gallery (December 18, 2003) Jens F. Laurson, Dip Your Ears, No. 39: Angela Hewitt, Bach Concerti, vol. 2 (July 31, 2005) English Suites on Ionarts: Piotr Anderszewski at the NGA (6th suite, April 27, 2006) David Cates at the Library of Congress (3rd suite, April 23, 2005)

What makes the English Suites distinctive, nothing to do with their putative national origin (a mistake of a title if ever there was one), is the fact that they open with impressive prelude movements, in some cases extended. As I noodle around with the English Suites from time to time at home, I enjoy playing each of the prelude movements the most of all, especially the concerto-like ones in the second and third suites. I enjoyed all of Hewitt's prelude readings, except for the lugubrious rendition of the sixth prelude's opening, but the dreary first section yields to an ebullient gigue.

As a young person Angela Hewitt -- the daughter of Dr. Godfrey Hewitt, organist and choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa, who died the year before this recording was released -- was also trained in dance (tall and thin, she still has a dancer's frame), and the balletic play of her arms over the keyboard is something you can appreciate only when you see her play in person. In the dance movements of these suites, Hewitt's performances are impelled by rhythm, not implacably but with the insistence of human movement. (For an excellent example, listen to the pair of irresistibly light-footed gavottes of the sixth suite. I defy you not at least to bob your head.) She tends toward too slow in the tempi of allemandes and sarabandes, for my taste, but thankfully not as wearingly as in Cédric Tiberghien's recording of Bach partitas.

Probably the complete recording by Christophe Rousset is the one to own, if you can have only one, at least judging by Rousset's other recordings. However, Angela Hewitt's Bach recordings, soon to be released as a complete set, mirabile dictu, are worth owning if you love clean yet warm performances of Bach. Her English Suites may not be the best in the set, but my ears thank me each time I play them.

Dip Your Ears, No. 39 (Hewitt's Bach Concertos)

J.S.Bach, Keyboard Concerti v.2 (BWV1053-57), Angela Hewitt / Australian CO Hyperion J.S.Bach, Keyboard Concerti v.2, Angela Hewitt / Australian CO Hyperion SACD J.S.Bach, Complete Keyboard Concertos, Angela Hewitt / Australian CO Hyperion

Bach is like an oasis or refuge… or both – whichever you need. Hearing these keyboard concertos with Angela Hewitt and the Australian Chamber Orchestra from a double-release on the Hyperion label (to be released late this July) reminded me more than anything else in recent months of my belief that classical music (or maybe just Bach) is an inherently superior music, after all. While most of that credit does go to the Old Master himself, I would certainly not hear him so well and the music would not be communicated so well, were it not for the immaculate, energetic, and utterly tasteful playing of Ms. Hewitt.

Playing Bach on a Steinway hardly needs justification anymore, but Angela Hewitt (who also wrote the informative liner notes) provides one of the most elegantly convincing arguments I have yet read:


It is said that if we sat down and copied out all of the music Bach wrote it would take us a lifetime. Yet he was composing it as well. So it is no wonder that from time to time he borrowed from himself. Such is the case with the keyboard concertos. If an original version has not been handed down to us, then there probably was one but it has been lost. Concerto movements also ended up in cantatas, often with florid parts being added to an already busy original. This recycling is one of the arguments I used to defend the performance of Bach on the modern piano. If he could write for the violin, oboe, or voice a singing, melodic line that would have its natural inflections, phrasing, and rise and fall, then why would he not have wanted to hear it on a keyboard instrument that was capable of doing the same thing (since the harpsichord could not)?


The concertos are indeed all either source material for other music or arrangements themselves. If Concerto no. 6 (BWV 1057) isn’t often heard, it must be because of its famous parent, the Brandenburg Concerto no. 5. Keyboard Concerto no. 3 in D major, BWV 1054, formerly known as the A minor violin concerto, BWV 1042, has a similar story to tell. Hewitt unfailingly sparkles throughout, and BWV 1057 making use of the harpsichord continuo alongside the grand piano (neither unique nor common as it were) makes for a particularly interesting and well-judged aural experience. The ACO proves to be a most amiable partner: responsive, flexible, and energetic.

(Going back to my collection, I was surprised to find out that up until now I had had these works [minus BWV 1057] only in two other versions: Trevor Pinnock’s on harpsichord [Archiv] and Glenn Gould’s [Sony]. Perhaps that goes some way in explaining my desire to use phrases such as “utterly tasteful,” “well-judged,” “immaculate,” and “unfailingly this-and-that?”)

This is volume two of the final Bach offerings of Angela Hewitt on Hyperion, lest she can be convinced to do the works for multiple keyboard also. It is as wholly recommendable as all previous installments of her solo Bach – which is to say: very much!