A Canadian pianist introduces herself

HEWITT

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt has had a long and active career as a soloist, yet until this past Sunday, she had yet to play in Boston. Her belated introduction to the city came courtesy of the Celebrity Series of Boston.

Hewitt is known principally as a Bach performer, but she is in some ways an unusual one. Most current Bach players favor a kind of dry pointillism; Hewitt plays with great fluidity and grace. The first phrase of Bach's English Suite No. 6 spun out languidly, as if suspended in space. In the lengthy fugue that followed, she sculpted Bach's counterpoint into phrases that ebbed and flowed with a shape all their own.

The Sarabande was a model of sustained beauty, while faster movements, like the closing Gigue, built forward momentum. If a degree of clarity was occasionally missing, it was more than compensated for by her richness of tone and the drama she imparted to the music.

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 6 in F, Opus 10, no. 2, left a more mixed impression. Hewitt made this rather compact and light piece sound unusually tempestuous, as if it had been written during the composer's middle period. Tempos were pushed and pulled in a way that made some of the drama sound artificially imposed. She was at her best in the finale, whose energy and perpetual motion she captured in crisp articulation.

First up in the second half were the first two Valse-caprices by Faure, works clearly influenced by Chopin. The music, varying between exuberance and reverie, is of limited depth, but Hewitt gave it exactly the wit and sparkle it needed, using a full palette of colors, nuanced tone, and rippling phrases. She also made its considerable technical hurdles seem like no big deal.

Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin" made for a terrific close. Hewitt understands this music at a deep level; her performance captured Ravel's surfaces in bold colors and with great clarity. Her account of the Menuet movement was a stunner. The word conveys something trifling, but the music grows from innocence to something of tragic beauty.