/ 1 February 2008

Taking Bach to the masses

Angela Hewitt explains why she took on the challenge of performing all 48 preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier in 25 countries.

A world tour for a classical musician in demand is not a rare thing. For those of us who regularly give as many as 100 concerts a year, it seems the tour never stops. Constant travelling, mistaking the number of your hotel room for the one you had in a different city the night before, arriving at the airport carousels and having to work out where you’ve just flown in from — these are common. The idea of a Bach world tour, however, is not.

My touring plans are mapped out more than two years in advance. So this started in 2005 when my Italian agent asked whether I would be interested in presenting the 48 preludes and fugues that make up Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier in a major venue in Italy. I said that of course I would love to, but that I needed time to prepare for such a massive undertaking and also that I couldn’t do it for just one performance. If I was going to put all 260 pages and four-plus hours of music solidly back into my brain and fingers, then there had to be a bigger reason. The idea then came to me of offering it to major cities around the world during the 2007/08 season.

I have never been one of those pianists who tour with the same recital programme for an entire year. It seemed, therefore, a good idea to offer The Well-Tempered Clavier for a fixed time, and see what kind of a response it would elicit. I drew up a list of places (some familiar, such as Carnegie Hall in New York, but many, including South America and South Africa, completely new to me) that I was interested in and my agents set to work.

The demand was such that I had to prolong the tour, extending it to 14 months. By the time it finishes in Hong Kong this coming October, I will have made something like 110 appearances in 25 countries on six continents.

Why did I choose The Well-­Tempered Clavier? Why not the Goldberg Variations (much easier in all respects, though far from easy to carry off well)? When I first performed the complete ’48” in 1999/2000, I realised the tremendous impact it has on audiences. It is such a rare event to hear it all at once. I was also eager to revisit it and feel the growth that takes place inside us but of which we are not always totally aware. And to celebrate the completion of my 11-year project to record all of Bach’s major keyboard works for Hyperion Records, there seemed no better work to choose.

Many people don’t realise that Bach wrote hardly anything in the score in the way of precise indications about how his music was to be interpreted. Nothing tells us how slow or fast a piece should go, how loud or soft, how detached or smooth. One was expected to know these things if one had been well taught and had good taste. Perhaps this freedom is why I never tire of playing it. There is always something you can do differently to make it better.

Beyond the technical problems, there is the challenge of finding the stamina it takes to perform marathon recitals night after night from memory. You learn to pace yourself to make sure that your concentration and energy will still be there for you when you come to the final fugues, which are among the most demanding.

I am often asked what I think about while performing. That question is, in part, unanswerable. There are simply too many things involved. I also believe that an artist should never reveal the very private source of his inspiration.

With Bach, the concentration has to be unfailing. That is a feat in itself, as it is impossible not to have extraneous thoughts assault your brain (during a concert in Brescia, the strap on my high-heeled shoe broke during the third prelude-and-fugue set, and I had the next hour before intermission to wonder what I would do when I got up from the piano). The slightest cough from the audience at the wrong moment is enough to derail you.

When I begin one of these performances, it’s as though I have to empty out all that is inside me in order to start afresh, filling my heart and mind with the spiritual food that Bach has so generously left us. No music demands more of the performer or is a greater test of musical intelligence.

Much music makes more noise and lends itself to more dramatic displays of emotion and virtuosity. Bach doesn’t need that. If music speaks to parts of the soul that words alone can never reach, then Bach does it better than anyone else.

As I finish writing this, I am in Venice. I stood alone in front of the Bridge of Sighs while the fog descended on St Mark’s Square. Tomorrow I will play Bach for my debut in La Fenice. Suddenly a lot of what we worry about in our everyday lives seems trivial. —