Full house for Angela Hewitt at Wigmore Hall

It was a full house last night welcoming Angela Hewitt back to the Wigmore Hall for yet another triumphant recital. You really feel the capacity of this venue when it takes you the entire interval just to queue to the toilet!

At an age where many would pare down their repertoire to a few gems, Angela continues to expand and push her boundaries. Only recently I had heard her play the Bach and Brahms D minor concerto back-to-back with Fidelio Orchestra (with her conducting the former from the keyboard!) before she quickly zoomed off to Estonia and Finland to begin her Mozart Odyssey, a grand survey of all the Mozart keyboard concerti over the course of two to three years. This time she has brought her prelude-and-fugues programme as well as Bach’s Sixth Partita in E minor.

The prelude-and-fugue programme is a sequence of, well, prelude and fugues beginning with the first six from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book I (in a slightly different order), followed by Mendelssohn’s E minor, then Shostakovich’s F minor and ending with Samuel Barber’s Fugue which is also the finale of his notoriously difficult Piano Sonata.

Angela had told her audience not to clap in between the pieces, so as to feel the effect of one piece on another, but it was hard not to, since she played with such intensity and concentration that each piece–even each prelude–seemed a work in its own right. Here was a pianist who has diligently maintained her technique; her fingers had a razor-sharp focus and nothing was left to chance or required the veiled disguise of the pedal. She excelled at the more dance-y of Bach’s music, where the rhythm took on a life of its own and you felt her join in with the dance rather than initiate it. But technique aside there was real intensity in Angela’s playing and at her most intense the pianist seemed to be completely absorbed by the music. The music in the monumental C sharp fugue of Bach (which she placed at the end of the six Bach prelude and fugues) took on cathedralesque proportions, not in the volume but in its density, where I could literally hear an entire choir.

After the Bach cycle it felt completely right to applaud (as a straggler audience member did, to be quickly shushed by a wave of her hand) but Angela launched straight into the passionate E minor prelude and fugue of Mendelssohn, and I was borne still higher by the intense waves of passion. Her concept of the overarching structure of this programme that she had put together was awesome, and the concentration which she applied matched the grand proportion of this demanding programme. It was an intense and heavy programme, not easy for the audience either, but the attentiveness of the audience was testimony to Angela’s communicative powers as a performer. Whenever Angela plays she always speaks in a very compelling way, and when at her best and most inspired the listener forgets he is listening to the piano.

After the interval there was only Bach’s final Partita in E minor, his most intense one, left to reckon with. For me the climax of the performance was most definitely in the Sarabande. At this point Angela seemed to enter a realm of her own, launching into a private and very intense soliloquy which as a listener seemed almost rude to intrude upon, not to mention risk breaking by coughing. She was in total communion with her sound; all concept of piano and playing and bar lines and rhythm fell apart and it became pure expression. I completely forgot about the player and heard only the music. I realized that this was inspiration found after ceaseless diligent work, inspiration that descends on a devoted artist, and which in turn inspires her audience. A memorable moment for me to see someone who so personally identifies with Bach’s music.

Article featured photo credits to The Wigmore Hall.