Angela Hewitt solo piano recital

Christ Church Cathedral, Victoria BC

16 May 2015

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt has made a study, it appears, of the generosity of virtuoso performers, among them Franz Liszt and Domenico Scarlatti. Virtuosity is not a measure of technical proficiency; it is about giving with all that is in you, losing yourself to the music, responding to the notes on the page as if you were singing them.

And sing them Hewitt did, at a master class on the day before her performance at Christ Church Cathedral, giving listeners a clue to her own virtuosity. In her notes to a gifted student who performed a toccata Hewitt hadn’t played for many years, she gave hints at how she became such an outstanding performer. She sang; she conducted; she described a passage as “the language of sighs.” And she pointed out the bars in the score, where “you bring in all these voices (notes) and take down the other voices.”

Small wonder then that when Hewitt played in the cathedral last Saturday, the passion with which she interpreted the music of Bach, Beethoven, Scarlatti and Liszt was palpable. The big black Fazioli grand piano dominated the church platform, but the real living, breathing instrument in the room was Hewitt.

Raised in a musical family, the Ottawa-born pianist has been playing since the age of 3. She gained national prominence in 1985 when, at 27, she won the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition. Ever since, she has been branded as a premier interpreter of Johann Sebastian Bach, but the truth is that Hewitt is a wide-ranging musician whose discography of more than 40 recordings includes composers from Schubert to Scarlatti to Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart and Messiaen.

The evening’s five segments all made some reference to Italy, where Hewitt lives part-time and runs the Trasimeno Music Festival. She led off the recital – her first solo performance in Victoria — with a performance of Bach’s Italian Concerto in F major, the performance of which won her the Toronto prize 30 years ago. Such crispness and forceful fingering in the opening movement brought to mind another word often associated with this musician: joy.

Hewitt introduced Beethoven’s “Les Adieux” Sonata with a story about how it was inspired by a sad farewell he had to his friend and supporter Archduke Rudolph in 1809 when the French bombarded Vienna. Hence the lament at the opening of the sonata, which Hewitt played with her whole person, as if she might have been a dancer, her fingers making footwork on the keyboard. Her ability to shift moods from light to dark, soft footfalls to ominous thunder suggestive of cannon fire is what gives her performances so much drama.

Following a few Bach arrangements (from a 2001 CD), Hewitt played Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, recorded for a forthcoming CD and chosen from the 555 short harpsichord pieces Scarlatti composed. She played four, including the K.87 in B minor, a contrapuntal piece played by many famous musicians.  With her strong round arms flying, Hewitt makes 18^th-century music such as Scarlatti’s alive and breathing in the 21^st century.

Franz Liszt’s incredible evocative Années de pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) and his “Dante Sonata” with its powerful soundscape of hell brought the recital to a close. Returning for an encore, Hewitt switched gears with an achingly haunting yet transcendent playing of Debussy’s Clair de Lune. And then, with her one arm flying up off the treble end of the keyboard, and the other down off the bass end, the music seemed to release her.

A footnote: in the audience for the recital was a couple married in 1973 in Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa, where Godfrey Hewitt was organist. Angela Hewitt, then 15, played at their wedding and clearly bestowed her joy on them, for they remain happily married 42 years later.

Much Ado About Nothing

Tarragon Theatre

Until May 17, 2015

Desi Shakespeare never had it so good. Under the direction of Richard Rose, the Brampton Much Ado, complete with Bhangra, Bharatanatyam and Bollywood references, Hindi surtitles and a fine cast of South Asian actors, wrings the classic comedy for every conceivable form of humour.

Some may object to the sometimes over-the-top farcical, even slapstick moments. But just try to stifle a laugh at Alon Nashman’s Benedict as a ruthless, self-possessed CFO, grey suit covering a vulnerable heart, in a comic turn that transforms him into passionate suitor for the hand of Beatrice.

Rose and consulting director Ravi Jain’s adaptation of the comedy is straightforward. Messina is Brampton; in place of a war between Italian city states, we have the hedge fund wars. In place of Don Pedro, prince of Arragon, we have Lord Tata, billionaire businessman and his duplicitous, vengeful half-brother Jovanni Tata. Presiding over the entire affair, as in Leonato, governor of Messina, is, Ranjit, Mayor of Brampton. He’s the Shakespearean fixer, the one who drives the plot, decides who marries whom and acts the benevolent godfather to niece Thara (Shakespeare’s Beatrice). Darius aka Claudio, a young lord of Florence, is Benedict’s protégé. Darius is smitten by Ranjit’s daughter Sita (Hero in Shakespeare), but he’s too shy to approach her. His friend Lord Tata offers to do the honours and impersonates Darius at a costume ball, winning Sita for his friend.

The seduction is successful and the wedding is on, but there’s always a wrinkle. Tata’s jealous half-brother Jovani must sow discord and destroy the peace of Brampton. He does it through a ruse to make Sita look unfaithful. In this he is assisted by Dalal, hiding in Ranjit’s garden in the disguise of a stone warrior statue, making for an amusing bit of stage business.

Music and dance are what knit together the cultural elements of the play, advancing the plot and anchoring the desi adaptations, without which it would be hard to tell the players without a scorecard. Nova Bhattacharya choreographs an opening Bharatanatyam dance class, at which we perceive that Thara, while sharp of tongue, is lacking in graces.  Battacharya can act too: as Menaka, the lady’s maid, she joins in the scheme to discredit Sita. The Michael Jackson “Thriller” sequence elevates the comedy to pure satire, but the comic highpoint is definitely Nashman creeping around behind artificial bushes and even on to the laps of audience members as he tries to eavesdrop on Lord Tata and friends setting a trap to make him think Thara is infatuated with him.

Much more style than substance, this Much Ado might have failed were it not for some classically trained actors such as Ellora Patnaik, as Auntie, wiser sister of Ranjit, Anusree Roy as Thara and David Adams as Mayor Ranjit. Ed Hanley’s sound design supports many jovial moments and Michelle Tracey’s costumes cleverly express the Shakespearean themes of class conflict, false love based on the acquisition of wealth and power and true love that restores harmony.

In the end all discord is removed, all money stays in the right hands and families remain intact. You might say that in this Brampton Much Ado, all’s well that ends well.

Above: Ali Momen, Kawa Ada, Alon Nashman and David Adams in the Brampton Much Ado About Nothing

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

It isn’t entirely clear how the neologism in Peter Chin’s Returning Empathis (empathy/emphasis) plays out in the work at hand. But never mind. We get the references to deep listening and empathy. Five dancers cluster around a throne-like chair to listen and watch as soloist Naishi Wang performs a tremendously articulate dance, all hands, limbs, sharp emphatic gestures – as if speaking to them.
When we watch dance we are practising a form of empathy, dancing in the dancers’ shoes, as it were. And we go into the dance and out of it, as do the watching dancers here, entering the empty space — the space of awareness — breaking into duets, quartets and solos, almost signing with finger gestures in their harmonic arrangements. Each entry onto the stage is a reinvention of oneself, akin to a reincarnation. Cheryl Lalonde’s costumes in the colours of Tibetan monks enhance the understanding of Eastern forms of thought. Chin’s marvellous soundscape, a haunting surround of chants from Tibet, music of Burkina-Faso and Madagascar and the ascendant choir of voices singing Thomas Tallis’ O Salutaris hostia provides the other chamber for this dance of ever-cycling life and death. Along with Naishi Wang, performers Alana Elmer, Yuichiro Inoue, Pulga Muchochoma and Jarrett Siddle make wonderful music together.
The Asian elements to the piece are a reminder that dance began in temples, in sacred spaces. It is a shame Chin’s piece couldn’t have been performed in a wide open white space, sun streaming in at a side angle. As it is, the bare, scarred walls of the Winchester stage, with its armature of industrial lighting equipment make a distraction requiring a very willing suspension of disbelief.
Speaking of which, Susie Burpee’s Making Belief (OR Seven Stages for Transformation, as played by a Willing Character) is a charmingly manic discourse on what it means to put on a character, go in and out of character, reveal the trickery behind the curtains and generally romp about in a swirl of artifice. Naishi Wang puts on a sad-face mask and white wig, while Pulga Muchochoma, his comic opposite, strides in like a loopy, vaudevillian Mr. Bojangles, grinning and manipulating Wang’s geriatric, tentative sadsack to perform — damn it. The metaphors get a little mixed as the rest of the company joins them, alternately role-playing as audience and back-up ensemble. A muscular Jarrett Siddall does deep breathing and holds his breath as if it was an athletic feat: maybe a sly jab at the tendency of some performers to overachieve on stage.
In any case, it’s a whole lot of fun, and to see Toronto Dance Theatre in all its current diversity – culturally, physically and stylistically – is to imagine we could have watched them dance all night.

Making Belief. From left: Danah Rosales, Christianne Ullmark, Megumi Kokuba, Naishi Wang, Alana Elmer, Nathan Todd

Photography by Ömer K. Yükseker.