As Angela Hewitt tells us in her exemplary accompanying essay, Bach's Toccatas were inspired by Buxtehude's 'stylus fantasticus – a very unrestrained and free way of composing, using dramatic and extravagant rhetorical gestures'. For Wanda Landowska, they seemed initially 'incoherent and disparate' and it takes an exceptional artist to make such wonders both stand out and unite.
Yet Angela Hewitt – always responsive to such a teasing mix of discipline and wildness – presents even the most audacious surprises with a superb and unfaltering sense of balance and perspective.
Time and again she shows us that it's possible to be personal and characterful without resorting to self-serving and distorting idiosyncrasy.
Everything is delightfully devoid of pedantry or over-emphasis; few pianists have worn their enviable expertise in Bach more lightly. In the F sharp minor Toccata everything is meticulously graded, and in the dazzling D major Toccata, which so fittingly closes her programme, not even Bach's most ebullient virtuosity can induce her to rush; everything emerges with a clarity that never excludes expressive beauty.
Her performances could hardly be more stylish or impeccable, more vital or refined; and, as a crowning touch, Hyperion's sound is superb.