Elegant and immaculate in both musicianship and platform wardrobe,
the pianist Angela Hewitt doesn't immediately rush to mind when
considering the wild music of Liszt. Well-ordered Bach is more her cup
of tea. She's equally a natural in the piquant French delights of Ravel
and Debussy. Yet here she is, with an album of Liszt, Liszt and Liszt.
The
first paragraph in her programme note doesn't exactly bode well: 'After
hearing the Liszt Sonata as a teenager, I came away thinking what an
awful piece it was. It just seemed a vehicle for banging the piano.'
That's my point: I can't even imagine Hewitt banging a door, still less a
concert grand. She thinks differently now, or so she says she calls
this big B minor sonata masterful and thrilling. Yet probably a secret
residue of teenage distaste remains: she certainly stays determinedly
fastidious throughout the work's fortissimo thunder or the Dante
fantasy's mad ride to hell …
Even if her approach sometimes rubs against the music's grain, the poise
and clarity of her textures and phrasings still brings major pleasures.
She elucidates the B minor sonata's structural subtleties and balances
its boarding power with scintillating details like the silver arpeggios
circling round the second subject about nine minutes in. In the three
Petrarch sonnets, the kaleidoscope of emotions is exquisitely traced. If
only she could enjoy Liszt's flamboyance more: I'd almost buy this
album for the piano's numerous dying notes, reverberating long and
exquisitely toward the end of time. (Geoff Brown /The Times)
Thank you !
ResponderEliminarDistinctive and delicious! Thank you.
ResponderEliminar