Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff
The pianist’s lyrical programme of Messiaen, Mozart and Chopin revealed colours and drama that one might not always associate with Hewitt
For Olivier Messiaen, Sundays were sacrosanct. For more than six decades he was organist of Sainte-Trinité in Paris, having first deputised there as a 20-year-old in 1929. Remarkably, that same year also saw the appearance of his first published compositions, the eight Préludes for piano, so it seemed fitting that six of these were central to Angela Hewitt’s Sunday morning recital at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
Some of the aura of Debussy can be heard, but Messiaen’s own distinctive musical language – ecstatic and enigmatic – is already present. From the delicate wing-flutterings of the first, La Colombe (The Dove) through to the virtuosic figurations of the eighth, Un reflet dans le vent (A reflection in the wind) moving from gently sighing breezes to tempestuous gusts, Hewitt brought to each prelude an intense and wonderfully controlled expressive focus. To those who only associate Angela Hewitt with Bach, this would surely have been a revelation.