Angela Hewitt (piano)

Italian Concerto - Bach

Preludes and Fugues Nos 9-12 from Book II of The Well - Tempered Klavier - Bach

Goldberg Variations - Bach

A glance at the record catalogues shows that playing Bach on the piano is fashionable again, and in recent years Angela Hewitt has established herself as one of the foremost Bach pianists. She has a technique which makes every single note clear, and a sensitivity which can endow slow passages such as the central movement of the Concerto and the 25th variation of the Goldbergs with a special quality of tone, without there being any suggestion that the music is being romanticised.

The faster variations of the Goldbergs and the outer movements of the concerto sparkled joyfully, with miraculously clean fingerwork in the notorious handcrossing 20th variation. Angela Hewitt does not hesitate to apply the subtleties of tone of which the modern piano is capable to Bach's music, but it's done so tastefully that the tonal palette never draws attention to itself, and only in the 30th and final variation of the Goldbergs did she treat herself to generous use of the sustaining pedal and a few naughty left-hand octave doublings.

It is interesting that it should be the Goldbergs - music explicitly written for a two-manual harpsichord - which worked best on the piano. One certainly felt that they worked better than the Preludes and Fugues written for a generic keyboard, where the piano's naturally heavy tone sometimes weighed the music down. Best of all, perhaps, was the encore, a sumptuous rendition of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, which in Myra Hess's transcription becomes, indeed, modern piano music.