Angela Hewitt at Zankel Hall
Kathleen left the office at seven sharp yesterday, and I quitted the apartment shortly thereafter, so we both got to Carnegie Hall in plenty of time for an eight-o'clock curtain. Never mind that there are no curtains at Zankel Hall, which is tucked into Carnegie's basement. We had time to spare for a trip to the 55th Street Deli. Kathleen was feeling peckish and headachy and wanted to get some Raisinets. (Did you know about CandyDirect?). We sauntered back to the entrance to Zankel Hall, cluelessly imagining that we were there before everybody else. Not until the massive but vacant elevator doors opened on the Parterre level to resounding applause did I think to look at the tickets: make that a seven-thirty curtain. We had just missed the first work on the program, Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, and we would have missed the second work, the much longer French Overture in b, as well, if an usher hadn't taken pity on us and shepherded us to the invalids' seating section to one side.
Ask me how I discovered Angela Hewitt, and I can't tell you, but I began accumulating her Bach recordings on Hyperion some time ago. I won't say that they're my favorites, because I could never derogate András Schiff or Keith Jarrett, but they're up there, and when I worked through the schedule last fall in search of a good concert to introduce us to Zankel Hall - I deliberately....
....didn't try to get in during the hall's first season - Ms Hewitt's recital made the first cut. (Another event, which I wish I'd chosen also - not instead - was an evening of dervishes. If I'd known that we'd be going to Istanbul...) And then, on the basis of repertoire and week-day, it emerged as the winner. I knew that there would be Bach on the program, but I forgot the rest, and by last night was actually feeling a little guilty about dragging Kathleen along. It was only when I managed to open the program that I saw the work that had undoubtedly clinched the selection months ago: Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin.
The French Overture was new to me. Unlike the French Suites, it has a full-blown overture, in the manner of the Orchestral Suites, in the French manner. A halting, grandiose proclamation soon gives we to a the rapid workout of a theme that is half-playful, half-urgent, and invested with the feeling of perpetual-motion. The proclamation makes two reappearances, and the number lasts about eight minutes. It is followed by six dance movements and an "Echo." More than in any other music that I'm aware, Bach seizes French severity and make it his own.
After the interval, we had Couperin's Treizième Ordre, a suite rather unlike Bach's. Before performing it, Ms Hewitt - who turns out to be Canadian, not English, as I had unreasoningly assumed - explained that the meanings of the characteristic titles that the composer attached to his movements have only recently been unearthed, and that the thirteenth of Couperin's suites refers to events at the court of the Regent, Philippe d'Orléans. I'll take Ms Hewitt's word for it. To hear Couperin after Bach is to grasp the difference between the French and Saxon baroques only to find that it is nothing more than the perennial difference between France and northern Germany. Where Bach is rigorous and even relentless in unfolding the implications of his subject-matter, Couperin is sprighty and agile. I would turn conventional epithetry on its head and say that Couperin is the more muscular. The fourth movement of the Ordre is a theme and variations entitled "Les Folies Françaises," its theme derived from the celebrated if fatherless tune, "La Folia." The final movement, "L'âme en peine," was performed with a dry anguish that brought out a relation to the theme of the Goldberg Variations, which always seems so innocent at the start and so suffused when it is repeated at and as the finish.
When we got home, I fished out a recording by Monique Haas of Le tombeau de Couperin. Ravel originally wrote this work for solo piano, and only later orchestrated four of its six movements, shifting their order slightly. Because each number memorializes a friend whom Ravel lost to the Great War, the antiquarian title has a punning quality that resonates poignantly with the brisk and clear music. Because the orchestral version has always been popular, the original work has been someone overlooked, and this couldn't have happened to a better guy, because it was Ravel's orchestration of Pictures at an Exhibition that performed the same inhumation of Mussorgsky's original. More about that in a moment. Monique Haas's performance sounds like nothing but the piano version of a well-known score.
Ms Hewitt, in contrast, made the work sound like Gaspard de la nuit, Ravel's triptych of scary virtuosity. She brought out inner voices that the orchestration obscures while letting inner voices that the orchestration promotes to recede somewhat. And yet the world of Couperin was very much with us; Ravel's strict observation of ancient dance forms was clear to see. What Ms Hewitt surprised us with the paradox of a elegantly classical package capable of containing a maelstrom. Her interpretation as well as her performance was bold and unforgettable. That's not to say that I don't long to possess the recording. One passage stands out. During the mounting intensity that seems to precede the climax of the trio of the minuet, but that in fact is the climax, Ms Hewitt, who is a lithe woman, rose on her haunches like a horseman to toll out the slablike chords, doubtless setting many minds along with mine thinking of the climax of Pictures.
As an encore, Ms Hewitt played Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte. It was very fine, but I'm afraid that my memory-forming circuits were still swamped with recollection of the Tombeau, so I don't remember why it was fine. I will say that Ms Hewitt is my kind of pianist. There are pianists who rumble with the piano, and pianists who cajole. Ms Hewitt seems to transfuse every atom of the grand piano in an extension of her nervous system. I had the suspicion that no pianist could find a mistuned instrument more intolerable; perhaps I got this idea from the intermission tune-up.
Zankel Hall is a great addition to New York's concert life. Except for its ceiling, which is black and covered in a brambles of tubes, lamps, and catwalks - do designers think that black makes things invisible? It really just makes them look scary - the hall is bright and not at all subterranean, although the subway's adjacency is quite a bit more noticeable. Our proper seats were way up front, but we never went to them, finding the freestanding handicapped-section seats quite agreeable, and the sound great.
