If you need a distraction from the strange case of alleged classical hoaxer, Joyce Hatto, here's Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt playing the prelude and fugue in F-sharp minor from Book II of the Well Tempered Clavier:
This NY Times profile notes that Hewitt isn't your average, assembly-line virtuoso:
"Not many people play the 48 from memory in public, and it sets you apart..." Ms. Hewitt, who does not have a publicist, writes her own engaging liner notes. She frequently speaks to the audience during recitals, for which she often wears elegant gowns that, she said, “reflect my playing: not too frilly.” She also regularly updates her lively blog (angelahewitt.com), saying the Internet makes the loneliness of constant travel more bearable.
Ms. Hewitt said she didn’t even mind audience interaction during performances. While Glenn Gould wrote an essay titled "Let’s Ban Applause," Ms. Hewitt said that since the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata (Op. 2, No. 3) ends with huge gestures, "if people don’t clap, I feel I haven’t played it right."
Wouldn't Gould have made a great blogger, though? As for the Hatto affair, it looks as if she was rumbled by the technology, not the reviewers:
Several days ago, another Gramophone critic decided to listen to a Hatto Liszt CD, of the 12 Transcendental Studies. He put the disc into his computer to listen, and something awfully strange happened. His computer's player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszts, but not a Hatto recording. Instead, his display suggested that the disc was one on BIS Records, by the pianist Lászlo Simon. Mystified, our critic checked his Hatto disc against the actual Simon recording, and to his amazement they sounded exactly the same.
How long before it's all turned into a Hollywood film, Judy Dench as Hatto, Steven Seagal as the editor of Gramophone?
MORE: Let's hear it for Nora the cat. Is that an Alban Berg piece she's playing? [Via The Rest Is Noise]
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