Ms. Hewitt played WTC Book II this afternoon. For a long continuous
run of these preludes and fugues I need more drama, but that is not a
statement about her style but about my tastes. Mr. Vroon wrote a nice
editorial in the last issue of ARG about how our preferences in
musical style are genetic much like our preferences in food - it is
written in your genes if you like your music and food hot or bland
(Mr. Vroon's bizarre editorials and diatribes against American culture
are alone worth the subscription price.) Some pieces were played
better than others - some were sublime - but overall I found her style
today to be mannered at times. Many of the fugues sounded bland or
affected as if she was playing a Couperin piece: cute, charming,
petite in its emotional scope. What drama she missed in her playing
she made up for in histrionic antics of throwing her hands high up in
the air and dropping them down slowly like snow flakes, grimacing and
making gestures of sublimeness, or cutting off a chord brusquely when
the ear expects it to linger and flinging her hands away from the keys
abruptly as if they electrocuted her. She played without the score on
Friday and made a lot of mistakes, often preceded by hesitations.
Today there was a score, which she initially did not use much but
gradually came to rely on it and made far fewer mistakes. Barenboim
played both books from the score earlier this year in Stern Hall and
made a lot of mistakes, whereas Konstantin Lifschitz played from
memory in Town Hall, did not make mistakes but got lost in fugue #18
in G-sharp minor from book II (and cleverly found his way back.)

Simonel

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