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2015-02-08 / The Sunday Times / Paul Driver

Hewitt’s Liszt interpretations are both exquisite and dramatic, at once finely thought-out and exalting. From the first bar, the Sonata is invested with a freshness. Indeed, she makes a point (as explained in her notes) of playing those unison Gs so as to suggest the “muffled timpani” mentioned by the composer. Her feeling for the work’s grand architecture is manifest, and she nicely ends with the B minor’s dramatic precursor sonata, Après une lecture du Dante. In between come three beautiful Sonetti del Petrarca. Wise long pauses are left between items, time in which to forget every music you ever knew.