BACH TO THE FUTURE
Ottawa-raised piano great Angela Hewitt returns home next week
Piano great Hewitt coming home to Ottawa
For Angela Hewitt, the practice room was beckoning.
When she spoke to the Citizen this week, the Ottawa-raised concert pianist was in Winnipeg, about to begin a stint of North American touring. She had three concerts there immediately looming, plus two much-anticipated solo concerts at Dominion-Chalmers United Church next week. The latter fall under Hewitt’s immensely ambitious, multi-year, multi-city Bach Odyssey project, which will see her play all of the Baroque master’s keyboard works.
“People think you get to my stage, you don’t have to practice anymore. That’s a fallacy. You really have to do just as much as ever,” Hewitt said.
“I’m going to walk out in the -25 degrees over to the hall,” Hewitt said. “I think I’m going to practice six hours today.”
Before Hewitt began her regimen, she made time to discuss, in the edited conversation below, her thoughts on Bach’s music and its role in her life, plus the rigours and pleasures of her career, past and present.
Q Tell me about the appeal of Bach’s music for you.
A It’s just so extraordinarily beautiful and beautifully constructed and full of joy. It’s mostly based on dance rhythms, and dance being an expression of joy, it’s music that makes you feel better, that seems to put everything right, that has a successful completion. All these things that we look for in life are in Bach’s music. It also seems to be a music that brings a great deal of comfort to people in many ways. Under times of stress, they seem to turn to Bach as a first composer.
Q You have a cassette tape of yourself at the age of four, playing Bach. Did he already loom large for you?
A My father was the organist and choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa for 50 years, and so I grew up, from the time I was born, listening to him play Bach on the organ, and play magnificently. And many people in Ottawa are still around who remember that. So that was my daily bread. My first teachers were my parents. They’re the ones who started me off learning his music, and teaching it to me well with no bad habits, so I was very fortunate that way. So Bach was always like a friend, really. He was one of the first composers that I was attuned to, I suppose, and taught and inspired by. I played him on the violin, sang Bach in church, and danced to Bach. So it wasn’t just playing him on the piano.
Q Competitions are long behind you, but I want to ask: How does playing in a competition compare to playing for a listening audience?
A The most stressful thing you’ll ever do in your life as a pianist is get up and play in a competition. If you play in a competition, the first round at nine o’clock in the morning, a Chopin etude, when you might not have slept well and don’t know the piano — it’s about the hardest thing you can do.
At least with a concert, you will have had proper rehearsal time usually, and time to get to know the piano.
It’s not so stressful. (But) nothing is ever not demanding. Playing in Carnegie Hall is just as demanding as playing a concert for people in a living room.
Every performance is important. So much depends on the place, on the piano, on the acoustics of the hall ... In Ottawa, I’m playing my own Fazioli concert grand, which is a wonderful piano, and the acoustics in Dominion-Chalmers are great. I have a good piano tuner in Ottawa, Don Cote, so I know the variables in Ottawa are highly in favour of having a really lovely experience. That makes me very happy.
Q How testing is the Bach Odyssey for you?
A Well, I’m testing myself because it’s a huge undertaking, a huge, huge, huge amount of work. I’m dying to get to the piano today to practise. I’m always testing myself. But it gives great shape to my life over the next four years.
It’s great that it gives me the opportunity to also perform some of the Bach cycle that I haven’t played so much in my life. Some pieces I haven’t played in 15 years, so it’s a huge pleasure to get them back in my repertoire again. But some are old favourites, that I’ve played my whole life, like the Fifth French Suite, that ends the second program in Ottawa on the 18th.
Q What does the Bach project represent for listeners?
A For people to have this experience of hearing the complete keyboard works of Bach, it’s a unique opportunity, once-in-a-lifetime thing, really. We need to give a medal to people who go to each of them. They should have a card with a stamp … a loyalty card. phum@postmedia.com twitter.com/peterhum
People think you get to my stage, you don’t have to practice anymore. That’s a fallacy. You really have to do just as much as ever.