Prom 10: BBC Concert Orchestra/Wordsworth - ‘Music for Royal Occasions’, 22 July 2022

Royal Albert Hall

Bliss: Jubilant Fanfare no.1
Handel: Coronation Anthem no.1, ‘Zadok the Priest
Walton: Coronation March: ‘Orb and Sceptre’
Elgar: O hearken thou, op.64
William Henry Harris, arr. Jonathan Manners: The Windsor Dances
Henry VIII: Pastime with good companie
Britten: Gloriana: Courtly Dances
Parry: Coronation Anthem: ‘I was glad’
John Ireland: Epic March
Judith Weir: I love all beauteous things
Byrd: O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our Queen
Handel, arr. Hamilton Harty: Water Music: excerpts from Suite no.1
Vaughan Williams: Silence and Music
Cheryl Frances-Hoad: Your servant, Elizabeth (world premiere)
Elgar: ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ March no.4 in G major

BBC Singers (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)
BBC Concert Orchestra
Barry Wordsworth (conductor)

 

Copyright: BBC/Chris Christodoulou 

Having gone to this Prom with an open mind, buoyed by the sight of Handel, Byrd, and Elgar among the rest, I am tempted to conclude so much the worse for open minds. Should one keep an open mind about ‘Brexit’ as living standards plunge, goods disappear from shops, stations and airports overflow, vehicles pile up en route (sorry, ‘on the way’) to Dover, and so on? Of course not, though the Foreign Secretary Liz ‘Pork Markets’ Truss’s ‘innovative’ demand that France should sort things out is doubtless worth considering. Certainly France could have sorted out some of this programme: if ‘Music for Royal Occasions’, where was Versailles, let alone Vienna, Dresden, or Berlin? But really, even were one to take the English/British restriction at face, non-political value, a ‘Music for Royal Occasions’ that excluded Purcell in favour of William Henry Harris? The programming looked eccentric, but perhaps we should ‘make Harris work’, ‘get Parry done’, and so on?

Perhaps. There were, to be fair, some better moments, a good few of them, although the BBC Singers seemed an odd match for the repertoire. A local choral society might have been more apt. The brass and percussion of Arthur Bliss’s Jubilant Fanfare no.1, apparently composed for a BBC broadcast of George VI’s Christmas speech, made for an effective, even anticipatory curtain-raiser. The contrast with those celebrated anticipatory strings of Zadok the Priest, mercifully free of ‘period’ affectation from the BBC Concert Orchestra and Barry Wordsworth, worked well and if the performance was on the small side for the Royal Albert Hall, one could hear the words, largely thanks to excellent articulation from the BBC Singers. I could have done without the weird twirling crowns behind them, though, presumably set up for Sunday’s television broadcast but increasingly aggravating in the hall. Elgar’s O hearken thou, written for the coronation of George V, was far more interesting than its monarch. It may be a ‘minor’ work, but it is a finely crafted one: a prayer, rather than a public profession, and moved through its mastery of harmonic progression both in work and performance. If there is little that cannot be traced back to Mendelssohn or, if not, to Wagner, these are two masters worthy of the utmost respect, and what Elgar does can be reduced neither to influence nor to function. Drums, woodwind, and voices made for a refreshing Pastime with good companie from Henry VIII (so far as we know). 

Moreover, in the second half, Byrd’s O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our Queen, from about the time of his appointment to Elizabeth I’s Chapel Royal, came as a relief in every sense: neither simpler nor more complex, shorter nor longer, than needed be, a jewel that gleamed even in a setting to which it was hardly suited. In the circumstances, a relatively ‘neutral’ performance from the BBC Singers was no bad decision, more or less allowing the illusion of words and music ‘speaking for itself’. A little later, the evening’s commission, Cheryl Frances Hoad’s Your servant, Elizabeth, took Byrd’s words and music and refracted them through a twentieth-century aural lens, various elements, different tonalities included, intelligently set in counterpoint (literal and metaphorical) with one another, imparting also a sense of Anglican versicle and response. More of this spirit would have been welcome. In between, an outing for Vaughan Williams’s Silence and Music, written for an Arts Council set of part-songs for Elizabeth II’s coronation, revealed harmonic oscillation and persistence in happy alliance with thoughtful English word-setting. 

One could even have waved through Walton’s Orb and Sceptre Coronation March. Its opening, after all, breathed the air of a postwar, televisual age. The reprise, however, of that opening more than outstayed its welcome, and the composer’s typical self-satisfaction soon had one realise this was music that, a certain technical skill notwithstanding, was all surface—without that surface ever approaching that of, say, a Ravel. Walton came across as a kindred spirit to Webern, though, by comparison with the aforementioned William Henry Harris, whose Windsor Dances, receiving their first and, let us hope, last performance at the Proms, barely attempted, let alone achieved musical interest. It was plausible enough to imagine them ‘inspired’ by our current Head of State. The titles of these mercifully brief orchestral arrangements from piano duet pieces—‘Castle Walls’, ‘Down by the River’, ‘At a Canter’—said it all. 

The same drum used to announce Henry VIII’s contribution did so for Britten’s ‘Courtly Dances’ from Gloriana. The opera has its devotees, I know, making typically extravagant claims for it, but these dances are thin gruel, far from helped by a pretension that the material cannot and does not justify. I thought the Pavane would never end. The Lavolta was at least a little more colourful, though a programme description of it as ‘fiery’ bewildered. Maybe the performance was lacking, for it sounded about as fiery as, well, Elizabeth II. Alas, Judith Weir’s strangely inconsequential I love all beauteous things, written for the Queen’s ninetieth birthday, also seemed to have its dedicatee in mind. Harris, I suppose, had not even managed the ‘strangely’ part. 

John Ireland was certainly capable of writing music of interest, especially for the piano. His Epic March, though seemingly played well, proved utterly devoid of musical interest. Intended, apparently, as wartime propaganda music, it semeed more likely to disillusion those poor souls on the Home Front fated to endure it. And where—I should have asked this earlier—was even a desultory nod towards decolonisation? Place these pieces in some sort of counterpoint with a wider world, especially a wider world brutalised by the empire they (often) hymned, contrast them with other ‘royal’ music, even simply choose better examples: but this, really? Did anyone seriously think it worth of revival; and, if so, why? 

Hamilton Harty’s Handel may sound intriguing on paper, but rarely has it emerged with the courage of convictions. Wordsworth here seemed curiously tentative, as did the orchestra. The abiding impression left would probably have been that the ‘authentic’ movement had a point, which is surely to have missed the point. If one wants Handel-Harty, one should go to Georg Szell. Even Elgar’s Fourth Pomp and Circumstance March was treated with kid-gloves. What initially sounded as though it might have offered a fresh look, inspired by Mendelssohn-like lightness, turned out merely to be glib and, reading between the lines, a little embarrassed by it all. Lack of sentimentality was welcome; what stood positively in the performance’s favour remained unclear. 

I have saved nearly the worst (after Harris) until last: Parry’s execrable I was glad, which manages somehow to be both vulgar and tedious. (I see it was revived for the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton, which again makes a sort of grimly apt sense.) Here the clash with the BBC Singers seemed strangest, a mismatch that certainly did not reflect badly on them. What empty, shop-worn rhetoric, and to what end? Pierre Boulez once referred to Shostakovich’s music by way of an olive-oil metaphor: a third pressing of Mahler. This sounded like a fifth of an already bowdlerised Victorian-Edwardian Brahms. It was as dull as ditchwater. All hail the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Windsor.

Uchida/Grosz/BPO/Rattle - Mozart, Walton, and Kodály, 6 October 2017

Philharmonie

Mozart: Piano Concerto no.27 in B-flat major, KV 595

Walton: Viola Concerto

Kodály: Suite: Háry János

Mitsuko Uchida (piano)

Amihai Grosz (viola)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Try as I might, I could not work out the idea behind the programming of this concert. In practice, it brought us the Berlin Philharmonic – and Simon Rattle – at their best after the interval, in works by Walton and Kodály, whereas far and away the best music came before that interval. Not that there was anything wrong with the orchestra’s playing, or indeed with Rattle’s conducting, in Mozart’s final piano concerto, but there was something of a sense of compromise, as if orchestra and conductor – arguably soloist too – were pulling slightly in different directions. There was none, or very little, of the mannerism that has often so disfigured Rattle’s conducting of Classical music; that, after all, is hardly Mitsuko Uchida’s style. But a very small orchestra – only eight first violins – sounded a little plain of string tone, with the true orchestral delights coming from a fabulous woodwind section. The first movement lacked the autumnal quality puritans tell us we – and it – should eschew, but nor was it especially vernal; indeed, even Uchida’s playing, although excellent, had a degree of neutrality to it. That worked rather well in the development section, when her passagework sounded entwined around ravishing oboe and bassoon solos. Indeed, the orchestra had sounded enlivened as soon as she entered. And Uchida’s was a distinguished performance overall, as one would have expected. The slow movement was beautifully shaped, never unduly moulded. It spoke and sang with simplicity, however secondary. Here, Uchida continued to ornament her lines, but far more so than earlier on: ever tasteful, indeed ever delightful. The finale was finely articulated from all concerned, Uchida’s command of line especially noteworthy. There was much to commend, much to enjoy; comparisons can wait until another day, or indefinitely.

The Berlin Philharmonic sounded like a different orchestra after the interval; of course one would not expect Mozart to sound like Walton, or vice versa, but it was more than that. Richly Romantic, there was no denying this sound’s ‘fit’ to the repertoire. (Interestingly, and to my mind highly surprisingly, Karl Böhm had conducted its Berlin Philharmonic premiere in 1958, with William Primrose, whilst the 1961-2 revision, heard here, received its first – and until now, only – performance from the orchestra in 1969 from Giusto Cappone and John Barbirolli). Just two weeks earlier, we had heard Máté Szűcs in the Bartók Viola Concerto; now it was the turn of the orchestra’s other principal viola, Amihai Grosz. If the Bartók is far from my favourite piece by that composer, comparison with Walton’s concerto, in whichever version, does the latter no favours. If, once again, I found myself far from convinced by a work that has a tendency to sound like bits of film music stuck together, then it was not for want of trying from Grosz, the orchestra, or Rattle. The vaguely jazzy sections and those that sound somewhat like Prokofiev are perhaps the most convincing parts of the first movement; they certainly sounded splendid in themselves here. Grosz’s double-stopping, moreover, was to die for. Stravinskian rhythmic precision made its mark in the second movement. All concerned made a great effort to unify the work in its finale. Grosz’s lyricism here – and not just his – made a gorgeous sound indeed. His Reger encore, however – I am not sure offhand from which of the Suites it came – was very much more to my taste. It was lovely to see Rattle sneak in at the back of the stage and sit at the piano to hear it too.

I tried too with Kodály’s Háry Janos Suite. Perhaps trying was the problem, for it is fun enough in its way, if perhaps a little laboured in the fifth movement. The Prelude is in many ways impressive – and certainly proved so in performance, lower strings offering more than a hint of Bluebeard Bartók (in which I had heard them earlier this year). There are worse models, far worse models! The festive quality to the Vienna Musical Clock movement was relished. And violist Naoko Shimizu played her opening to the third movement, the ‘Song’, with a beauty of tone that, in context, hinted at a link, however, strained, with Walton. It is always fun – well, nearly always – to hear the cimbalom too, and we most certainly did on this occasion, if rather less imaginatively (writing, not performance) than I had earlier this week in Jörg Widmann’s Zweites Labyrinth. The Berlin brass’s performance was truly outstanding in ‘The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon’, and so on. It was an enjoyable performance in itself; quite what its connection with Walton or Mozart might have been remained obscure.

In celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee: Clein/Philharmonia/Gardner, 5 June 2012

Royal Festival Hall

Walton – Crown Imperial

Elgar – Cello Concerto in E minor, op.85

Holst – The Planets

Natalie Clein (cello)

Philharmonia Voices

Philharmonia Orchestra

Edward Gardner (conductor)

I arrived at this concert in somewhat curmudgeonly mood. Why, if a concert celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee must be restricted to English music, need the choice be so chronologically restricted? Would it not be more interesting to include some Byrd or Purcell? What of living composers, Birtwistle being perhaps the most obvious choice, or indeed the Master of the Queen’s Music, or, perish the thought, someone a little younger? Was it not a bit depressing that the audience in the Royal Festival Hall was so lacking in younger faces, and might they not have been attracted by a more varied programme? Was it not still more concerning that I failed to spot a single face in the audience that was not white? Those are all real questions, deserving of real answers, of course, and I could add a pedantic query as to why it was thought appropriate to wear evening tails at 3 o’clock in the afternoon; it was nevertheless heartening to appreciate, as the concert went on, that it was not quite so Establishment-focused as prejudices might have suggested.

There was little, I admit, to have suggested that in the opening number, Walton’s Crown Imperial march, which received an oddly charmless reading from Edward Gardner. It was vigorous, rhythmically alert, superlatively played by the Philharmonia, but mercilessly hard-driven, machine-like even. (A republican protest? Somehow I think that would be to clutch at straws.) It was almost as if Gardner were above all determined to show that he was not Sir Adrian Boult, who conducted the first performance and the 1937 coronation performance, when it was employed to mark the arrival of Queen Mary. Just a hint of a musical smile would have been nice, but this was more Wehrmacht than Westminster Abbey. It was good, though, to hear here and elsewhere the Royal Festival Hall organ being put to good use, on this occasion by Richard Pearce.

With Elgar’s Cello Concerto we found ourselves in very different territory. The first movement proved somewhat problematical. Natalie Clein was keenly attuned to its dark, pained lyricism, but Gardner displayed an alarming tendency to fussy micromanagement, almost as if parodying Sir Simon Rattle, when the apparently ‘natural’ wisdom of a fellow knight such as Sir Colin Davis would have been more welcome. The Philharmonia, however, remained on excellent form, even if the performance were often made to sound more lethargic than spacious. Clein brought a greater nervous intensity than one often hears to her reading, but there is nothing wrong with that; indeed, it helped counsel against easy simplifications and generalisations concerning the composer. Nevertheless, she sounded as though she needed a conductor who would rein in certain tendencies towards the distended. The scherzo fared much better all around, the performance sounding reinvigorated without being unduly driven. A fine balance was struck between lightness and propulsion. The ‘Adagio’ seemed to have benefited from that dose of elixir; it was impassioned without mannerism. Perhaps it was less relaxed than ‘tradition’ would dictate, but there is far more under the surface here than most ‘traditionalists’ would ever notice, let alone admit. Elgar’s troubled soul sang relatively freely here, in what emerged as a post-Great War song without words. The finale bore the weight of what had hone before but again largely without the mannerisms of the first movement. The anger of constraint – social and æsthetic? – sounded, but then it always had: think of Gerontius. Twin torments of a soul and a nation whose day in the sun was already nearing its end sounded movingly. I wished from time to time that Gardner would adopt something of Clein’s freer approach – there were phrases that were still over-regimented – but the Philharmonia continued to provide sterling service. There could be no doubt here that there has been no greater English composer of concertos than Elgar.

Reservations over aspects of Gardner’s approach evaporated when it came to The Planets. The brutalism that characterised Crown Imperial was far more apposite to ‘Mars’, whose ominous, chilling tread was served by strings as savage as brass and percussion. (A protest? Perhaps not intentionally, but a note of dissent could not help but make itself heard for those with ears to hear.) ‘Venus’ was properly Debussyan in colour, though there were times, believe it or not, when odd balances favoured harps unduly over flutes. A finely taken solo from leader Andrew Haveron and warm, ardent Romanticism at the movement’s heart contributed to a splendid performance. ‘Mercury’ was, well, dashingly mercurial. Occasionally I wondered whether it might tip into the rushed or garbled, but that danger was just about averted. The briskness of ‘Jupiter’ proved an intelligent way of avoiding misplaced piety; instead, we experienced a lively, alert celebration of sorts, with a welcome sense of carnival. I liked it very much. It was depressing to see so many in the audience so clearly ‘settle down’ for ‘the big tune’, despite Gardner’s highly creditable refusal to milk it, opting instead for touching Elgarian nobility. (Still, a reminder of how England has changed would greet the conservative tendency as soon as it emerged from the hall into Lambeth and Southwark.) Sadly, and not for the first time, some elected to applaud at the movement’s close. ‘Saturn’ exhibited the right measure of mystery and dignity. Tread here was processional, almost liturgical, quite opposed to the militarism of ‘Mars’. Rejoicing, bells-and-all, when it came, remained equivocal, with a welcome hint of Mussorgsky. Near-daemonic possession was the hallmark of ‘Uranus’, its kinship to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice especially apparent. And finally, the strangeness of the opening woodwind solos to ‘Neptune’ was rendered abundantly clear, reminding us that we were not so very far from The Rite of Spring. There was something intriguingly beguiling and not just international but alien to this conclusion. Off-stage voices contributed, of course, but so did orchestral colour and balance. A considerably more questioning affair, then, than I had initially envisaged.

Prom 21: Midori/CBSO/Nelsons - Strauss, Walton, and Prokofiev, 30 July 2011

Royal Albert Hall

Strauss – Don Juan, op.20
Walton – Violin Concerto
Prokofiev – Cantata: Alexander Nevsky, op.78
Strauss – Salome: ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’

Midori (violin)
Nadzhda Serdiuk (mezzo-soprano)
CBSO Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons (conductor)

Hopes, at least mine, ran high after last year’s outstanding Prom from the CBSO and Andris Nelsons. Alas, they were not really fulfilled in this curiously programmed concert. If last year, I noted that a ‘traditional’, non-conceptual, programme of overture-concerto-symphony had been renewed in these musicians’ hands, the present combination and ordering made no more sense in the hall than it had on paper. Indeed, given the frankly incoherent nature of Walton’s Violin Concerto, I began wearily to wonder whether incoherence were the guiding thread that attempted to impart coherence. (If so, it did not succeed.)

Don Juan certainly proceeded in such a vein, suggesting that Nelsons viewed it as superior film music – a potential connection with Walton and Prokofiev? – rather than a symphonic poem. His hyperactive podium style irritated somewhat when so misapplied: calming down, one suspected, might have permitted the music to breathe more easily. The opening had precision, yet seemed both driven in the manner of an orchestral showpiece – not unlike Claudio Abbado’s LSO recording: I suspect he would perform it very differently now – and all too audibly moulded. Strauss’s music may not ‘be’ natural, but it needs to sound as if it is more than ‘mere’ artifice. It is only fair to say that the CBSO’s orchestral performance was very fine: slower material sounded undeniably gorgeous, with glowing strings. Solos were exquisitely taken, for instance by leader Zoë Beyers and principal oboist, Rainer Gibbons, the latter’s line beautifully spun in musical and narrative terms. What the performance lacked was either a Kempe-like symphonic integrity or some attempt to deconstruct the hero as in Boulez’s fascinating Chicago recording of Also sprach Zarathustra. Nelsons’s Strauss appeared to be an irony-free zone.

Next came Walton’s Violin Concerto. Here the problem lay principally with the work itself, which frankly, even by Walton’s standards, is third-rate. The first movement sounded as if Elgar had wandered into a cocktail lounge, sauntered around aimlessly for a while and then another while, plagiarising Prokofiev as he wandered. That was as true of the violin part, here performed by Midori, as the orchestral writing. Midori mostly had the technical measure of the piece, though there were, perhaps surprisingly, awkward intonational moments, but she lacked the charisma necessary to transmute the material into something that might have glittered. If anything, the better performance came from the orchestra, Nelsons relishing Walton’s syncopations, and the woodwind solos quite ravishing when considered on their own terms – that is, somewhat akin to instrumental ‘colour’ for a television series. The second movement, if hardly profound, is less embarrassing; the performers captured well its Neapolitan mood, though I could not help reflecting wistfully that Busoni accomplished such things so much more interestingly. Midori had the measure of the Prokofiev-like writing; the orchestra heralded a sense of fantasy. But it was not clear that either ‘side’ was saying much to the other. Elgar returned to the mélange for the finale, though Prokofiev was not vanquished, some progressions sounding as if they had been lifted more or less wholesale from the Russian composer’s scores (and not just the violin concertos). Soaring lyricism – well, relatively so – vied with film score bombast. Some Midori fans went wild; the rest of us repaired to the bar.

It was nevertheless good to hear so vivid a performance of the Alexander Nevsky cantata. Whereas last year in Salzburg, I had admired Riccardo Muti’s Vienna Philharmonic account of Ivan the Terrible whilst being more than a little bored by the seemingly interminable 'oratorio', Nevsky emerged – as it is – a much stronger, coherent work. Nelsons imparted an electric quality to the pregnant opening section, ‘Russia under the Mongolian Yoke,’ which would rarely desert him. The splendid neo-Mussorgskian opening to ‘The Crusaders in Pskov’ was equally well captured, the composer’s trademark harmonic side-slipping relished, the CBSO strings grinding under the yoke of oppression. I was surprised at the hesitance of the CBSO Chorus’s performance early on, but by the time, of ‘Arise, Russian People’, it had strengthened, the block antiphonal exchanges between men and women coming across with admirable clarity. Mention must also be given to the excellent xylophonist. The central ‘Battle on the Ice’ had just the right sort of cinematic quality, yet convinced as music too, prophetic of the great ‘war symphonies’ still to come. Cumulative power was again reminiscent of Mussorgsky. Nadzhda Serdiuk had but a single number, yet sounded impressively soulful in ‘The Field of the Dead’. If the final ‘Alexander’s Entry into Pskov’ is not quite the ‘Great Gate of Kiev’, it was played as if it were, admixed with witty, Lieutenant Kijé-like interventions. During the concluding bars, I fancied that I could hear an organ, but it was simply the CBSO’s peals of rejoicing.

I was at a loss to understand why it was thought a good idea to follow Alexander Nevsky with the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ from Salome. Even as an ‘advertised encore’ it was not an obvious choice. Moreover, for all the excellence of execution, the overall effect was not dissimilar to that of Don Juan. The orchestral phantasmagoria towards the end was properly nauseous, but again there was more than a hint of film music. And I could not help but expect to hear Herod at the end, and feel disappointment when I did not.

Angela Hewitt's Bach Book, 23 November 2010

Wigmore Hall

Bach – ‘Chromatic’ Fantasia and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903
Kurt Schwertsik – Fantasia and Fuga, op.105
Bach – Three-part Inventions, BWV 796-801
Dominic Muldowney – Fantasia on BACH
Elena Kats-Chernin – Bach Study
Bach-Walton – Chorale Prelude: Herzlich tut mich verlangen, BWV 727
Bach-Howells – Chorale Prelude: O mensch, bewein' dein' Sünde gross, BWV 622
Bach – Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 894

Angela Hewitt (piano)

A worthy idea: ‘to ask,’ in Angela Hewitt’s words, ‘composers of my time to write short pieces inspired somehow by Bach’. This was the second of two concerts in which the results, commissioned by the Wigmore Hall with the support of the Fondation Hoffmann, were programmed. I could not help but wish that the three composers featured here had followed the precedent of Sir William Walton, Herbert Howells, and other contributors to the earlier Bach Book for Harriet Cohen, and confined themselves to transcription, for the three new compositions proved less than inspiring.

Best was Dominic Muldowney’s Fantasia on BACH, which did not seem to take itself too seriously. The fabled musical letters were audible yet somewhat transformed in their post-modernist treatment, which made its way swiftly thought ‘clockwork’ chorale, four-part fugue, two-part invention, stretto, ‘badly remembered’ recapitulation, and three-bar coda. The tango rhythm that kept resurfacing amused. Kurt Schwertsik’s programme note, speaking of tension between Sebastian and Emanuel Bach, read more interestingly than Schwertsik’s music. Its fantasia brought to mind, in its harmonic language at least, Prokofiev – not exactly a Bachian figure – more than anyone else, mixed with Hindemith. There was absolutely nothing to suggest that this might have been written after the year of the composer’s birth, 1935. The fugue seemed to lose Prokofiev and to transfer its affections to Shostakovich, though Hindemith remained. It ambled on amiably enough for a while, before an admittedly cheeky close. Elena Kats-Chernin’s Bach Study was allegedly ‘a reflection on Bach’s most famous Cello Suite in G major’. ‘Reflection’ was not immediately apparent, the result sounding more like imitation Michael Nyman, its vapid minimalism suggesting a suitable home on a Channel 4 ‘drama’ of a certain vintage.

After that low point, it was an extraordinary relief to return to Bach. (Is it ever not?) Walton and Howells showed restraint and mastery in their transcriptions of two chorale preludes. In collaboration with Hewitt’s pianistic skills, the works transferred very well to the piano, though they made this sometime organist wistful for the instrument on which he once would play this music. Hewitt’s way was not to accentuate the labyrinthine chromaticism of Herzlich tut mich verlangen: it sounded closer to Walton than, say, to Berg. But there was great dignity to both performances, and she allowed herself greater Romanticism in the Howells transcription, Bach as ever proving the greatest of all the Romantics. The exploratory harmony is, even by his standards, truly extraordinary, and so it sounded here.

Unhyphenated Bach did well too. The ‘Chromatic’ Fantasia benefited from a vigorous opening flourish, whose implications worked themselves out in what was to come. Hewitt offered a beautifully shaded account of this and the fugue, her legato touch impeccable. The fugue was more Apollonian – though certainly not, thank God, neo-Classical – than Dionysian in quality, the delight in Bach’s invention ‘purely’ musical. Lack of Gothic grandeur may to an extent be attributed to the brightness of Hewitt’s favoured Fazioli instrument. Six three-part inventions provided a wonderful sample, the opening contrast between no.10 in G major and no.11 in G minor especially winning. The former flowed easily, whilst the latter hinted at something more frenchified, perhaps even with a suggestion of Scarlatti in the minor mode; at any rate there was a sense of relative unpredictablity. A major brought warmth, whilst A minor proposed a sublimated, never arch, courtliness. Suggestions of Claude Daquin in the B minor piece (no.15) were gracefully apt. In the closing A minor Prelude and Fugue, Hewitt sounded liberated by the experience of the Walton and Howells transcriptions, her greater freedom redolent of an ‘encore’ moment, though not at the expense of thoughtful dynamic shading.

Three encores, when they came, perhaps proved one too many, though it was good to hear a transcription (Hewitt’s own?) of In dulci jubilo (BWV 729, I think) and considerably more than ‘good’ to close with a rapt account of the ‘Aria’ from the Goldberg Variations. Therein, one knew, lay the ‘real thing’.