With this two-volume disc set of Sonatas and miscellaneous works Angel Hewitt reaches volume 3 of her Mozart cycle. And as in her previous issues she remains a reliable, honest-as-the-day guide. A firm believer that music speaks for itself without impediment or a gilding of the lily she surely declares that little else is needful nor desirable. Her overall command, though within clear limits, is as unfailing as her certainty of purpose and intention. A by-word for transparency she is hardly a pianist to see 'through a glass darkly.'
Yet throughout all these performances she has you reaching out for higher virtues, for a more acute sense of balance, texture and rhythmic finesse. True, in the C minor Fantasia and Sonata she is alive to their dramatic contrasts, to what E.M. Forster called 'the C minor of life'(though he was referring to Beethoven). Yet even here there is something dogged about her approach, leaving you to wait in vain for a greater imaginative scope, for the notes to leap out rather than remain embedded in the page.
More sense than sensibility, the imbalance becomes even more apparent in the major key Sonatas(the playing is hardly of the sort to make you relish the repeats). True, there are moments in the F major Sonata K.533/494 where Hewitt edges towards greater expressive intensity, only to withdraw once more into a generalised sobriety. The C major Sonta 'facile' lacks the necessary element of innocence and charm, and where is a spring in the step inseparable from the joyous opening of the D major Sonata K.576? She is more methodical than joyous in the 'Ah, vous dirai-je maman' Variations which leaves you with the Gigue K.574, a jeu d'esprit that proves that brevity is indeed the soul of wit, the B minor Adagio and A minor Rondo. Hewitt quotes Albert Einstein's description of the Adagio as 'one of the most perfect, most deeply felt and most despairing of all his works' but both here and in the A minor Rondo, with its prophecy of Chopin, there is too little light and shade, too greater sense of a pianist ploughing a straight furrow.
I have greatly enjoyed Angela Hewitt in other parts of the repertoire, in her Schumann , Liszt and Ravel, but her Mozart lacks too many essential ingredients. In contrast and on the brighter side, her accompanying essay is a mine of information, of scholarship at its most lively and vivacious.
Bryce Morrison