Complete editions seem to be the norm nowadays, especially in
the case of Debussy’s piano music, so it’s refreshing
to be able to welcome an old-fashioned recital, particularly
one as successful as this. Angela Hewitt has chosen a well balanced
programme, and writes comprehensively about it in a most readable
booklet essay that includes many snippets of information that
I hadn’t come across before. This being Hyperion, the
presentation is so comprehensive that you can read it in French
or German as well if you feel so inclined. The recording, in
a lightly reverberant church acoustic, is just the job.
Children’s Corner opens with the spoof piano exercise
“Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum”, and it’s a very
diligent pupil playing here, very fast, regular and accurate
in the opening semiquavers. I wish I had pupils like that! As
the young player’s mind starts to wander, and the fingers
start to wander, Hewitt doesn’t quite achieve the uncanny,
almost cinematographic realism of Michelangeli (DG, 1971), but
then, who does? Michelangeli is similarly magical when Jimbo
finally dozes off at the end of the second piece, but Hewitt
is no less persuasive in her own, more overtly expressive, way.
The doll’s serenade is quite clipped, missing out on some
of the tenderness perhaps, and there are comments to make about
each of the remaining pieces, as this is a performance full
of insight that frequently presents music that one has known
and loved for many years in a new way.
Angela Hewitt writes that the Suite bergamasque has been
a favourite of hers since she first played it at the age of
fourteen. I was interested in this, because I have never quite
been able to take to it. The titles of three of the four movements
lead us to expect something along classical - even Baroque -
lines, with the one remaining title, “Clair de Lune”,
apparently the odd-man-out. To my ears, Angela Hewitt finds
something close to the perfect balance between pure classical/Baroque
sensibility and the opposing world of Commedia dell’arte
represented by the second word of the title. The opening call
to attention, for example, is broad and sonorous, Hewitt clearly
ready to respect the composer’s rubato marking,
but at signal points throughout the rest the articulation is
crystal clear, aligned with a most subtle use of the pedal.
The famous “Clair de Lune” is played without any
excess sentiment, though nobody would ever call it “straight”.
Overall, this is one of the finest performances, perhaps the
finest performance, I have ever heard of this elusive work.
“Limpid” is a word often applied to Debussy’s
first Arabesque - usually meant as a compliment - and
to performances of it. It’s a very good word, in all its
varying senses, to apply to Hewitt’s performance of the
outer passages, though she beautifully brings out the improvisatory
character of the middle section also. The second Arabesque,
quite different in character, and a more searching work, is
just as successful, the moment of calm shortly before the end
is exquisitely managed. Danse is an early, minor work,
though as I have written elsewhere, minor Debussy is pretty
much major nearly everybody else. Hewitt approaches it as a
major, if slightly frivolous, work. Pour le piano has
long been one of my favourite Debussy piano works, and once
again Hewitt is on top form. The opening movement is properly
imposing, and she is very sensitive indeed to the melancholy
aspect of the central “Sarabande”. Her performance
of the closing “Toccata” is very exciting indeed,
but there is a fierceness about some of the louder passages
that sent me back to my preferred reading, that by Tamás
Vásáry (DG, 1969). Without sacrificing anything
in the way of power, he gets closer, especially in the sonorous,
exultant middle section, to Debussy’s ideal of “a
piano without hammers”.
The great discovery of this recital for me was Masques,
a piece that has unaccountably passed me by in a lifetime of
studying Debussy’s piano music. It is a brilliant yet
sombre masterpiece, and Angela Hewitt is the finest of advocates
for it. She turns in a fizzing performance of another of my
favourites, the magnificent L’isle joyeuse, and
one which perfectly reflects her view of the piece as one “whose
tremendous energy needs to be held slightly in check …
before the outburst of unbounded joy.” There then follows
a long pause - this disc can easily be heard and enjoyed in
a single sitting - before the delicious, nostalgic, slightly
tongue-in-cheek, but no less touching for all that, closing
waltz, La plus que lente.
William Hedley
Angela Hewitt (piano) 