In each generation there seems to rise one person who is a towering figure at performing and interpreting Bach on the piano. In the 1980s, it was Andras Schiff. Today it is Angela Hewitt, who brought her artistry and insight to the UW President’s Piano Series Tuesday night at Meany Hall.
Her program comprised works by two older French contemporaries of Bach as well as the master himself, and it was a special treat to hear Rameau’s Suite in A Minor. This composer can hardly be considered unimportant, yet we don’t hear his operas as often as those of Handel, or his superb keyboard or chamber works nearly as much as those of Bach. Here, his Suite and Couperin’s Pieces de Clavecin demonstrated contrasts in style with the Bach.
From Bach’s pen, we heard the English Suite No. 2 in A Minor, the French Suite No. 5 in G Major, and the first four Contrapuncti, or works in counterpoint, from his Art of Fugue. Hewitt announced before playing the Contrapuncti that next spring she will give performances of the entire Art of Fugue: fourteen different fugues, four canons, and a chorale, all based on the same theme in D Minor. What was notable about her comments is that she is taking over a year to study in depth the interpretation of these works. They could sound dull, being all in the same key and largely the same format, if played without that perception. It’s that scholarly thoughtfulness, married to her superb technique, which makes Hewitt such a fine artist.
Her performance Tuesday used the assets of the piano—dynamics and pedal—with the clarity and articulation of the harpsichord. Many of the dances which make up the suites depend on numbers of notes for excitement as the harpsichord has a very short decay in sound after a note is struck. Harpsichord keys are very light, so it’s easier to play these at speed, while piano keys are much heavier and have longer decay so getting clear articulation takes far more technique. In the French work, particularly Rameau, this is compounded by lots of ornamentation. The result when played as Hewitt does is brilliance. Added to this was a judicious use of rubato—flexibility within the pulse—just enough for expressive shaping, and also of dynamic range, which on the harpsichord could only be achieved by doubling the strings struck.
The liveliness of her playing, the variety and vibrancy in each different piece, the thoughtful beauty of more sedate sections, as well as the illumination of every line within the four fugues, made every moment compelling. Ornaments as light as a feather plus a sense of humor imbued the Rameau, exuberance marked the final Gigue of the French Suite, and her encore of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, sounded breathtakingly tender.
