Hewitt’s style proves better suited to Baroque than Brahms at 92NY

Thu Oct 31, 2024 at 12:35 pm
Angela Hewitt performed Wednesday night at 92NY. Photo: Keith Saunders

Angela Hewitt and Johannes Brahms are both antiquarians at heart, immersing themselves in very old music—she to perform it in concert, he to deepen his understanding of composition.

If Hewitt’s recital at the 92nd Street Y Wednesday night had an overall title, it might be “The Long and Winding Road to Brahms.” With stops along the way at Mozart, Bach and Handel, it was a road paved with fantasy and freedom on one hand and concentration and rigor on the other, leading to a climactic second half consisting of variations by Handel paired with Brahms’s famous variations on Handel.

Hewitt, much admired for her performances and recordings of the music of J.S. Bach, is currently engaged in recording all of Mozart’s piano sonatas. So naturally expectations were high Wednesday for an insightful performance of Mozart’s great C minor diptych, the Fantasia K. 475 and the Sonata K. 457. (Opinions differ as to whether Mozart intended these two works to be performed together as a sort of super-sonata, but generations of programming practice have affirmed the thematic and spiritual links between them.)

For Mozart, fantasia was a musical genre that grew out of the improvisations with which he used to wow audiences, so a feeling of on-the-spot inspiration is even more important here than with other genres. However, Hewitt’s deliberate performance on Wednesday had the air of a conscientious player following instructions in a 240-year-old score. This mercurial work that startlingly anticipates Beethoven’s tempests and Schubert’s dark musings seemed to lack the impulse that turns keys and hammers into music.

The more structured sonata developed a kind of momentum in performance that helped solve the impulse problem. Hewitt’s chord voicing and singing tone livened up as well. The acerbic mood of Mozart in C minor came through clearly. Unlike most pianists these days, Hewitt took both of the composer’s indicated repeats—the exposition and the development-recapitulation—although one could question, in the latter case, whether she made the second time around worth the trip.

The Adagio had a singer’s natural timing and inflection, although one was still overly aware of all those hammers hopping around inside the box. The finale, with its furious pace and dramatic pauses, was well organized, if lacking in real suspense.

No doubt Hewitt would object to being pigeonholed as a Bach specialist, but it must be said that any disappointments in her Mozart performance were quickly forgotten when she tore into the Leipzig master’s dazzling Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. In music that can come off as just so much aimless zipping around in scales and arpeggios, Hewitt caught the fire of in-the-moment inspiration with (to mix metaphors) the fury and fluidity of rapids in a river.

The pianist was literally shaking on the bench from physical involvement as the fantasy progressed to impassioned recitative and deep sighs. Tension was relieved—but not entirely—as the sinuous chromatic fugue subject entered alone, then slithered through the fugue’s many episodes, vividly characterized as sad, dancy or menacing. Hewitt’s mastery of distinct voices flowing in clear counterpoint was second to none, in a performance richly satisfying on every level.

The chaconne originated as a stately dance in a slow three-to-a-bar, with a highly ornamented melody. Bach and his contemporaries added variations to make a brilliant and impressive instrumental piece. As Hewitt performed it Wednesday, Handel’s Chaconne in G major, HWV 435 (“Version 4,” for those who are keeping score) was a fine example, ranging widely from keyboard razzle-dazzle to deep pathos to a cantabile duet over an expressive bass line.

And so the stage was set for an even more ambitious work, Brahms’s Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24. Again, more than a century separated Handel’s Chaconne from this piece, a period that saw Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations and Beethoven’s “Diabelli,” not to mention the enormous development of the piano and pianism. The young Brahms’s brawny inspirations contributed mightily to the latter.

Hewitt’s performance on Wednesday seemed to take little note of all this, at least at first. Her dainty delivery of Handel’s shapely little theme seemed to carry over into Brahms’s variations, rendering many of them as keyboard curiosities and miniatures. Eventually, however, one’s ear adjusted, Hewitt’s playing became more robust, and listener and pianist met in the middle.

The pianist’s sense of counterpoint allowed Brahms’s intertwining lines to float into consciousness without forcing, especially in the repeats, which Hewitt scrupulously observed and always varied in a fresh way. In general, her leisurely contemplation of each variation pulled the piece apart a bit, but offered musical insights in return. The notion of a Brahms variation set as a Schumann-like cycle of character pieces with a common theme was never more evident.

Hewitt took the fugue at a similarly deliberate pace, but here Brahms’s counterpoint was less subtle than Bach’s or his own earlier in the piece, emphasizing brawn over brains, and more headlong momentum in the playing would have been welcome. But the pianist ground through it and did ringing justice to the powerful final pages. Her Fazoli concert grand sustained the big final chord for a long time, until she released it to a storm of applause.

The single encore was Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words, Op. 19b, no. 1, plush-toned and simply delivered.

92NY presents the Junction Trio in works by Shostakovich, Zorn, and Brahms, 7:30 p.m. Friday. 92ny.org


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