RNS/Hewitt live at the Glasshouse review – impeccable Mozart lacks bite

Angela Hewitt’s attention to detail and exquisite technique delivered some stunning moments of clarity in these two Mozart piano concertos, but also felt prosaic in places. A thrilling second half confirmed concertmaster Maria Włoszczowska as an exceptional talent.

About ten minutes into celebrated Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt’s recent performance an alarming sound came from a few rows behind me: snores, forte and with a crescendo, then apparently joined by a second source for a moment. It was so conspicuous and disruptive I almost felt embarrassment myself on behalf of the sleepy punter. Safe to say that he was the first topic of conversation when the interval came after two Mozart piano concertos, and that he was also not the only one in the audience beginning to drift off.

That said, it would be unfair to dismiss Hewitt’s account of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 6, a work she spoke passionately about at the start of the concert, as boring. Written by a 19-year-old Mozart in 1776, it was an early sign of Mozart’s staggering precociousness and features a wistful middle movement that belied the young Austrian’s years, even if much of the work, especially the prim opening movement, shows Mozart in particularly well behaved form, giving the bourgeoisie the pretty melodies they craved without offering much to challenge the status quo, as he would during his extraordinary creative burst in the mid-1780s.

Hewitt’s rendition was similarly well behaved, almost to a fault. There was plenty of scope for playfulness and humour in the rambling piano solo sections, in which tempo is often thrown out the window before a return to the reassuring tick of the orchestra, but Hewitt instead opted for cool precision. The result felt like cramming this youthful concerto into an ill-fitting three piece suit, swapping a sense of fun for sharp, clean edges. That’s not to say Hewitt’s suit wasn’t an immaculate one – her crescendi before returning to the main theme were frequently a delight, as was the ‘alarm clock’ right hand tremolo that added character to a stormier passage of the third movement. At the start of the concert, Hewitt talked about her focus on getting the piano to “sing” when she plays Mozart, and perhaps it was the soothing operatic quality of her playing that had heads nodding in the second movement, with tender phrasing that evoked birdsong. Not boring – just too beautifully tranquil for some of us to stay awake for.

If Piano Concerto No. 6 can be dismissed (rightly or wrongly) as a somewhat inconsequential corner of Mozart’s earlier works, the same cannot be said for Piano Concerto No. 24, which is in some ways its polar opposite and a shrewd contrast for tonight’s programme. One of four undisputed masterpieces Mozart wrote in 1786 – surely a fantastic year to be a wealthy resident of Vienna – the C minor concerto is one of Mozart’s most ferocious works, featuring a level of depth and detail unmatched by almost all composers at the time, and perhaps ever since. In the first movement it was largely Hewitt’s job to provide a more refined and sleeker contrast to the orchestra’s famously ominous unison refrain. As Mozart had done in his day, Hewitt also conducted from her piano stool, pulling out sweeping arcs of melody from the woodwinds in particular. But when it came to the big moments – namely every statement of that refrain – the power that RNS clearly posses never quite showed itself. What should have been a gathering musical tempest instead became a mere heavy downpour.

Hewitt seemed better suited to the slow middle movement, which presented perhaps the ultimate challenge to a highly trained musician such as herself – not a fiendishly difficult passage, but a remarkably easy one. The task of finding the sublime in Mozart’s simple refrain, which brings a risk of resembling a plodding nursery rhyme, was well handled by Hewitt, with careful placement of each of the five repeated chords at the hushed end of the melody. It was precisely this thoughtfulness that hindered the subsequent Allegretto. Hewitt’s rapid playing was technically flawless, but she seemed to be holding back from giving the raw gusto a piece as muscular as this one demands.

A second half of Mozart’s Prague symphony on paper served to fill out the concert’s runtime after Hewitt’s 70 minute first half. It turned out to be the afternoon’s biggest surprise – a blistering, zippy rendition and the finest performance from RNS concertmaster Maria Włoszczowska I have seen. It ended up revealing just how much of RNS’s symphonic power Hewitt had left untapped before the interval. The shift from Adagio to Allegro in the opening movement (slow to fast) was a real thrill, culminating in an almighty tug of war between the violins and violas, the sort of which has to be experienced live to hear the proper stereo effect – violins sat on the left, violas the right. As she had been whilst playing Beethoven last May, Włoszczowska proved to be a skilled performer-conductor, although the lack of dedicated conductor for the slow movement seemed to limit the scope for any rubato, and the piece came across a little colourless as a result. Much more exciting were the terrific tremolo blasts from the strings in the final movement, which somehow still sounded exhilarating and surprising even after their seventh and eighth repeats. It summed up an expressive and impactful account of the Prague symphony, and confirmed the special talents of this sinfonia, their first-rate leader in particular.

It was shame that such a grand finale had the side effect of overshadowing Hewitt’s performance. All the demanding pre-requisites for a concert pianist were there – a superhuman memory, impeccable technical accuracy, a clear passion for the source material – but in the end Hewitt’s rendition was left feeling a little underpowered and fastidious. When the whistles and cheers of appreciation came at their loudest at the end of this concert, it was Maria Włoszczowska who was taking the acclaim.

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