Trying to escape from her type-casting as a Bach
specialist, Angela Hewitt was welcomed by a full house for a mixed
recital which looked good on paper and was associated with her
recording of Ravel's piano music (Hyperion CDA67341/2).
Her last appearance at Wigmore Hall had varied the familiar diet
with Bach arrangements by many later composers. Best in this recital
however still was Bach - his English Suite No 3, where her way
with the counterpoint had one constantly listening to the (usually)
two voices simultaneously, far more easily than when hearing it
on harpsichord.
Couperin on the piano was less convincing, and
although Hewitt's preferred Fazioli piano gave clarity to the
eight pieces of the 6th Ordre from Book 2 of his Pièces
de Clavecin, so that we could savour her crisp ornamentation,
it was at the expense of warmth - I find them far preferable on
the instrument intended, and Olivier Beaumont's recording on harpsichord
(Erato) is a good one. Couperin was programmed as an obvious complement
to the Ravel Tombeau de Couperin, but succeeding all eight
of those pieces (four of them rondeaus) with music of a
not dissimilar form was perhaps inadvisable; the elegance of the
Ravel was somehow too close.
Notable was the Bach-like fugue (omitted from
the orchestral version) which benefited from Angela Hewitt's contrapuntal
expertise. The Faziloi certainly helped her fastidious articulation,
but there was an enervating dryness in the tone; Perlemuter's
legendary Nimbus recording from the 1970s, at breakfast next morning,
sounded preferable in all ways. Gaspard de la Nuit is featured
by so many pianists, and played so often at Wigmore Hall, that
it is a particular challenge. To illustrate how competitive is
this repertoire, I preferred a recent more exciting account of
it at the London International
Piano Competition by Alexei Zouev (a 19 year old Russian)
who brought to bear transcendental technique, the fullest palette
of pianistic colour and finely attuned ears, and he didn't even
reach the finals! Again, I suspect the choice of piano may have
been part of the problem; more detail, less atmosphere than, for
good example, in Perlemuter's benchmark accounts (Nimbus
NI 7713/4). For encores, Angela Hewitt gave the delicious
Idylle of Chabrier, one of Ravel's favourite composers
and mine, and a rather splashy account of one of the more flashy
sonatas by Scarlatti, whose 60 Sonatas were the only music Roland-Manuel
ever saw out on the piano in Ravel's Paris flat.
It will be interesting to hear the studio recording
of Angela Hewitt's new double-CD of the complete Ravel solo piano
music.
Peter Grahame Woolf
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