J S Bach Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830; Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 (“Moonlight”); D Scarlatti Three keyboard sonatas: sonata in D major Kk430, sonata in E major Kk380, sonata in C major Kk159; Brahms Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24
This is the first time I’ve seen Angela Hewitt play live. She spoke to the audience before the start of the concert – which is always a plus in my view – and briefly and lucidly gave her views on the essence of each piece. Her playing is muscular, tight and clear. The piano in the church seemed to be making a lot more noise and offering more depth than it did with Paul Lewis and this suited the works she was playing. Clearly the programme was examining different forms of Baroque music and the Romantic period, I guess, though there were no obvious conclusions to be immediately drawn……
While the Scarlatti piece offered music that was concerned with ceremony and delicacy, polite pieces of music in an 18th century sense, if one can talk about such things (I really like Scarlatti -his sonatas are always tuneful and cheerful) the Brahms and Beethoven were to varying degrees unruly while the Bach piece (which I also love) is something else.
The Bach piece was introspective, particularly the fifth movement, which seems to be almost as though it is a sort of personal communion between Bach and his God, Hewitt said – though there are some dance movements, the overall sombre tone reflects the overarching key of the pieces in E Minor. Hewitt played the piece as far as I could tell very well indeed. It is extraordinary to reflect that there is less than 80 years between the creation of the Bach Partita and of the Moonlight sonata – they seem to come from utterly different sound worlds. Though the first movement of the Moonlight sonata is I guess introspective as well, it is so in a way that somehow it’s about Beethoven, his state of mind, his feelings, without any of that austere reaching-out for something beyond the self that I find so satisfying in Bach. The third movement of the Beethoven puts him at the heart of emerging Romantic sensibilities in music – Hewitt played, in particular, this superbly.
The Brahms piece I had not heard before and I am afraid I had problems with it – to me, the best variations are the ones with memorable tunes as opening themes; think Goldberg, or Britten/Purcell, Elgar/Enigma and Brahms himself/St Anthony’s Chorale. Rachmaninov/Paganini works in the same mode, and, by the same token, I’ve never really been able to get excited by Beethoven/Diabelli. The variations with great opening themes are able to take you on a journey which leads back to the return of the original theme eventually with a sense of completion or triumph. If the theme is nondescript – as the Handel one Brahms uses is – you don’t really care about how or whether it comes back. The Brahms piece may have all sorts of merits – the skill in formulating the variations, the expertise in moving so far away from the sound world of the original theme, the excitement in the way it exploits the capability of the piano – and Angela Hewitt as far as I could tell played it extremely well, but much of it sounded like note-spinning for the sake of it. Sorry to be so dismissive – the fault is mine, I am sure……
John's musical journey 