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.
Two relatively early Mozart sonatas – K309 in C major and K281 in B flat major – had Hewitt’s trademark clarity of rhythm and articulation, with careful shading of the dynamics to vary the repeated phrases and sections. The sustaining pedal was only sparingly used, but lent warmth to the sound in the middle movement of K281, helping underline how unusual Mozart’s indication of Andante Amoroso actually was.
Hewitt seemed almost to relax into Chopin’s two Nocturnes, Op 55, and indeed to be enjoying finding a range of colours on the Steinway piano rather than her customary Fazioli, this concert being one of the RWCMD’s Steinway Series. To lyricism was added drama and display in the Chopin Scherzo No 4 in E major, Hewitt power-housing through. Her encore was Liszt’s arrangement of Schumann’s song Widmung, the composer’s wedding gift to his beloved Clara, all amorous ardour.