We went to hear Angela Hewitt make one of her fairly frequent visits to Bath to give a recital in the Mozartfest. Last time<\/a> I went she moved some distance from her usual stomping ground of Bach; this time she was well and truly immersed in it, with the second half of the recital being no.s 1-10 from The Art of Fugue<\/i>.<\/p>\n I went to a pre-recital ‘conversation’ with Prof. Jonathan Cross, in which the choice of programme was explained and illustrated. In fact the conversation framework was abandoned after a while, and Angela Hewitt played us extracts from the fugues and explained what was going on in each one. She also explained her choice of instrument, a Fazioli which can produce a wide range of tone for a skilled player.<\/p>\n The first half contained some arrangements of Bach by Wilhelm Kempff, followed by Beethoven’s Op. 101 sonata (which I last heard, in the same place, in an arrangement for string sextet<\/a>). These were all ably performed although in some sense they were antipasti<\/i>.<\/p>\n We both thought that we couldn’t easily take in that much fugal complexity all in one go, because this is a demanding work to listen to as well. I can’t say that my concentration held up perfectly, and I realised that The Art of Fugue<\/i> is much revered but is far from familiar repertoire.<\/p>\n What difference did the Fazioli make? I’m not sure that this is the best repertoire to show it to its best advantage. In particular, I thought that runs sounded less crisp than they would have done on a standard-issue Steinway. This is not so much of a drawback given that Angela Hewitt’s interpretative style tends, by modern standards, to the romantic. She wound down by playing some Gluck as an encore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We went to hear Angela Hewitt make one of her fairly frequent visits to Bath to give a recital in the Mozartfest. Last time I went she moved some distance from her usual stomping ground of Bach; this time she … Continue reading