Angela Hewitt is one of the most talented and acclaimed pianists alive today; it was evident in her performance at the 92nd street Y. Her technical ability showed through, as well as her ability to feel the “French” style in one of the pieces. While an impressive hour and a half performance, there was something about the performance that became boring and long winded to me.
The Art of the Fugue is a body of work that really stands out to me as a superb effort by Bach. I think using a subject, then adding more melodies and subjects on top to create a flowing piece of music is really impressive. There are certainly derivatives of this idea in many modern pieces of music. Learning and performing Bach’s fugues is major feat that I’m sure many pianists aim to do in within their career. With this in mind, I still found myself sitting in the theater longing to leave. Impressive as Ms. Angela Hewitt is, each fugue began to sound the same, to me at least.
Perhaps my inability to remain engaged for the entirety of the performance is because my view of her hands was virtually nonexistent. I’ve realized over the course of the many musical performances I’ve been to, I need to be able to see the musicians up close to really engage in a show. There have been times when I was trapped in the middle of a crowd, and I end up becoming aware of how much my legs hurt and how thirsty I am. Thankfully we were seated and I had water, so those thoughts didn’t cross my mind, but my mind still wandered by maybe the 9th or 10th fugue.
Another suspected reason for boredom was just the nature of the performance. I felt a repetitive quality to the music, and also felt there was no dynamic. A singular pianist can effectively show off technical ability to hit the correct note at the correct time. I found that emotion didn’t carry over well in her performance, and it has nothing to do with her as a pianist. I feel that the piano is an instrument that can display emotion well on its own. I know nothing about composing or conducting, but I feel that piano playing on top of more piano playing doesn’t express emotion as well as maybe a piano and another instrument. There was no dynamic, at least in my opinion, when it came to this performance. What I found was that I was impressed with her playing but kind of thought to myself, “yeah this is cool, but I just heard something like this in the last fugue.” Bach certainly knows how to make really enjoyable and interesting music, but when his collection of fugues are played in immediate succession, I found that it all blurred together and didn’t display intended emotion well. I haven’t revisited his music since the performance, but I feel that I would have more of an appreciation when I was able to choose how to listen to it.
Matthew, you bring up some important points about Hewitt’s performance. I totally agree with you that the performance as a whole was boring and had no progressive effect. At first, I was fully engaged due to the fact that Hewitt enticed us with her humorous personality and described the intricate process with which Bach used to compose his beautiful music. I was still engaged throughout the first five contrapunctuses because the music was fresh, new, and pleasant to my ears. However, towards the end it started to get boring and repetitive; every part sounded the same with the identical music phrase we sang in class. If only we could’ve sang that phrase during the performance. I’m a musical guy so it was easier for me to appreciate the music playing regardless of the piece choice. The piano is an elegant instrument that can accompany any genre of music and can appease or exasperate any emotion, mood, or attitude in a certain situation. While I play the piano myself, I found it easy for me to relate to the style of her playing like hitting the keys in a relaxed way, or raising her hands before touching the keys in different ways. A little advice if you ever attend something like this again: Try to move in your seat from time to time, turn your head, look at other people in the audience, and just ponder about your life while the music is playing; it will keep you up for the most part. Like you said, overall, I didn’t enjoy the performance as a whole because it was a continuous performance with no breaks and complete silence. However, I did enjoy some parts of the performance, especially those in between sections moments in which you could hear a pin drop.