>Hewitt’s later recording has a wonderful sense of deliberative unfolding and features a masterly use of colour in consort with keen structural and rhythmic awareness; no listener would ever regard it as other than a supreme achievement. Yet could it be that the passage of a decade has made the pianist think the approach is slightly too modest or compromising? Like Hewitt's performance of the Goldberg Variations here last March (review), this new reading of Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier seemed more dramatic and spontaneous, with even greater extremes of tempos and rhythmic emphasis and, to some extent, a greater reaching to the celestial heavens. It seemed like a fuller and more direct statement of what the pianist really wanted to say, and an ultimate flowering of the possibilities for contrast and dramatic expression in the pieces. In lesser hands, the increased intensity and range might easily be seen as mannered and too romantic; here it was presented with such intellectual absorption and discipline that it all made perfect sense. In fact, it seemed that an already strong narrative line was further nourished. Hewitt’s secret lay in referring to extremes very consistently throughout the work, so one always had the idea that they were integral to the penetration of the deepest secrets of these 24 supreme pieces.

goddamn who writes this stuff? you could change the nouns and it could be about anything. if I were Hewitt, though, it'd sure make me happy to read, which I suppose is the point, but goddamn, writer's in love

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who's that