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| The Djanogly Recital Hall at Nottingham University |
You see many weeks ago I discovered that the pianist Angela
Hewitt was coming to Nottingham and playing two recitals at Nottingham
University – one in October and the other in April 2013. The programme – Bach’s
“Art of the Fugue”. I applied for tickets on the first day they were available
but the October concert had already been snapped up. I did get tickets for the
April date and the lady in the booking office said she would put my name down
on the list for any October returns but neither she nor I had much hope. And,
then, on Monday afternoon she rang back. The rest is history!
So last evening Pat and I made the short trip to the
University and in the Recital Hall we listened not only to the wonderful music
of Bach but also heard it played by Hewitt who is unarguably today the foremost
interpreter of Bach’s keyboard music. In the intimate atmosphere of the
Djanogly Recital Hall, together with about 350 other Bach enthusiasts, we sat entranced and mesmerised. As I looked
round the audience I noticed many sitting with their eyes closed – not sleeping
but simply savouring the sound of Bach and Hewitt. I found myself, like many
others, craning forward - on the edge of
my seat – hanging onto every note. Quite magical. Boy was I glad that I
answered that phone call on Monday afternoon!
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| The magical Angela Hewitt - Glenn Gould's heir! |
Angela Hewitt is currently on a world tour of major concert
venues where she will perform Bach’s hugely complicated (and, as result, not often
performed) Art of the Fugue. Our evening in Nottingham University was one of those concerts. In the last few years Hewitt has
made Bach her own. She has recorded virtually all Bach’s keyboard works –
bringing her such praise as “one of the
recording glories of the modern age” and “the pianist who will define Bach performance on the piano for years to
come”. I don’t think anyone who sat in the Recital Hall last night would
disagree with those comments.
My lasting memory, however, of the evening is one I would
never have expected when I took my seat. I had expected to be entranced and
humbled to hear the great music of Bach – just as I am each time I visit the
Thomaskirche in Leipzig and hear the great choral music sung in the place where
Bach wrote it almost three hundred years ago. I had expected to feel a thrill
to be hearing one of the world’s great pianists play only a mile or two from my
home. Yes, I had expected all that and I wasn’t in any way disappointed. But what
I will remember when I think back to that concert is the look of both joy and
exhaustion when Hewitt stood up to take her applause after the final note of
the Fugues. The thunderous applause was expected – she will be used to that – but as I looked at her (and in
the in the intimate environment of the Recital Hall we were very close) she
smiled and bowed but looked absolutely drained and exhausted so much had she
put into her performance. How does one “wind down” from something like that I
pondered? How can you do that night after night? How paltry my £20 seemed for
such an inspiring two hours. Worth every penny and more!
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| Hewitt in full flow! |
On the same day as the concert I saw on the news that football clubs are
being criticised for huge price rises in
the costs of their seats I thought what a strange world we live in – I pay just
£20 to see and hear the most glorious music known to mankind and played by the greatest exponent of that music
in the world - a one off opportunity and event.
And yet it would cost me far more than £20 to go and see my local
football team filled with some very mediocre players and I can do that week
after week. I could watch them huff and puff, run around, kick a bag of air
round a bit of grass, abuse each other and in the case of the England v Serbia
game earlier this week have a violent scrap at the end! What a strange set of
values operates in the modern world! It seemed to turn the whole basic
principles of economics on its head! In economics, I seem to remember from when
I studied it, that economic “worth” is determined by the scarcity of a resource and the desire of
people for that scarce resource. Now, clearly, many people desire Premiership
football matches but football is not a scarce resource – society and the media
is awash with the stuff - so why is it expensive! And to add to that, another
very basic economic law is that of “diminishing returns” which basically states
the more that one gets of a thing the less one values it – surely that is true
of football! So what strange economic and psycholgical laws kick in here –
where something of dubious quality and certainly no scarcity is increasingly
desired by people who are already sated on it – and those same people will pay
ever increasing amounts to get more of something they already have a lot of!
I’m confused!
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| Pages from Bach's 1st edition of the Art of the Fugue |
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| The idiosyncratic Glenn Gould in typical pose |
Hewitt in most ways is the opposite of Gould – she is bright, outgoing, an easy
communicator – a star in every sense of the word. Gould on the other hand
was difficult, reclusive and often
antagonistic. Stories about Gould are the stuff of legend – indeed he became
something of a myth in his own short life time (he died aged 50 in 1982). For
example, he was a child prodigy passing
his final Conservatory examination in piano at the age of 12 and in doing so achieving the highest marks
ever of any candidate before or since. Whilst playing and recording he hummed to
the intense annoyance of audience and recording engineers and, it has to be
said, many who bought his discs! He was averse to cold, and wore heavy
clothing (including gloves), even in warmest of places. He was once arrested
and mistaken for a vagrant, while sitting on a park bench in Florida, dressed
in his standard all-climate attire of coat(s), warm hat, and mittens. The
temperature of the recording studio had to be exactly regulated. It was said
that when Gould was recording the air conditioning and heating engineers had to
work just as hard as the recording engineers. A small rug would be
required for his feet underneath the piano. His piano had to be set at a
certain height and would be raised on wooden blocks if necessary. He had to sit
exactly fourteen inches above the floor and would play concerts only while
sitting on the old chair his father had made. He continued to use this chair
even when the seat was completely worn through. His chair is so closely
identified with him that it is shown in a place of honour in a glass case at
the National Library of Canada! Since his death a steady stream of Bach
enthusiasts from all over the world visit his grave. And even in forty years since his death his
memory is recalled in deep space! In the Voyager 1, the deep space probe launched by NASA in 1977 –
five years before Gould’s death - there is “the Golden Record” a specially
constructed “record” of the greatest sounds of mankind and his culture. There
are three Bach recordings included – one of them is Gould’s interpretation of
the Prelude and Fugue in C major. So, the music of Bach and the prodigious
talent of Glenn Gould is hurtling through space – and is now the furthest
man-made object from earth!
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| Voyager 1 - containign Gould's 1955 version of Bach's Goldberg Variation - the furthest man made object from Earth! |
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| Gould recording - all wrapped against the elements |
And Angela Hewitt? –
as I say, not at all like Gould – but without any doubt his musical heir. Last
night’s programme was a delight – mostly Bach but with a Beethoven Sonata
thrown in and a wonderful encore which the audience loved. The main piece of
the evening was, of course, the Art of the Fugue – the first ten “movements” or
“Contrapunctus” as Bach termed them. At the April concert we will hear the
remaining parts of the work. In whatever she played her fingers flew across the
keys and the sound of the Steinway grand piano positively filled the Hall –
although Angela Hewitt is quite a tall lady she is slim and certainly no
heavyweight – how did she make such a big sound! During the short interval I
commented to my Pat “how does she
remember all the notes?”. But in the second half when we heard the Art of
the Fugue a small music stand was erected on the piano and it appeared that a
kind of i-pad placed on it? It certainly wasn’t sheet music – maybe it was the musical
equivalent of the politician’s autocue!
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| The wonderful statue of Gould in his native Toronto. Maybe the city fathers will one day place Angela Hewitt at his side! |
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