The 44^th-annual Rockport Chamber Music Festival kicked off Friday evening at the Shalin Liu Performance Center with a magnificent traversal of Bach’s Goldberg Variations by superstar Angela Hewitt. Before taking her seat at the keyboard, Hewitt welcomed us briefly in order to forge a connection with us, breaking down invisible barriers so as to put us at ease and on a level footing. She conducted us through a précis of Bach’s monumental work — its structure, its exceptional range of affects, its technical challenges, its place in history — sharing her visceral belief that the work was in fact written by the seasoned 56-year-old composer for the prodigiously talented 14-year old Goldberg.  

Eschewing more abstract and more paroxistic interpretations, Hewitt imbued Bach’s Goldberg Variations with a distinctive subjectivity. (What is man, that thou art mindful of him?) Through subtle shadings of dynamics, she gave the opening aria a riveting complexity. Exploiting the implicit nobility of the sarabande form, Hewitt painted it with hues of elegiac sadness, hope, innocence, reverence — fleshing out the aesthetic power of the score without restraining it.

The first three variations kindled an almost euphoric, three-dimensional bodily joy, kinetic and playful at first, then gathering momentum to culminate in the satisfying safety of the canon at the unison, gathering us securely in the vast lap of the universe. The ensuing trinity deepened the bodily joy by shaping it into a new desire for mastering dance steps (Variation 4) as a condition for greater emotional and mental capaciousness (Variation 5) – culminating this time with the onset of separation, of individuation: Hewitt emphasized the marvelous dissonances of the canon at the 2^nd.

The next three variations were particularly evocative. Hewitt gave Variation 7 a stately yet vivacious reveling in fancy footwork. She then infused a surprising joy into the French-style hand-crossing of Variation 8, suggesting the mysterious ability of music to articulate parts of ourselves that words cannot divulge. The canon at the third (Variation 9) presented a prayerful framework of elevated thought — a new kind of safety mediated by number, measure and weight. Body, mind and soul were now adjusted to one another, working in tandem “to God’s glory.” Hewitt elaborated a new sense of personal integration by bringing out the mature, deliberate gestuelle of the fughetta (Variation 10). Creating a vivid contrast, she then accentuated the mercurial virtuosity of the two-part toccata (Variation 11) as though depicting the inner turmoil of private questions and doubts, churning like a brooding weather-system inside of us. Interpreting the contrary motions of the canon at the fourth (Variation 12) as symbolic of a new phase of our spiritual journey, Hewitt gave it a tinge of resignation — hinting at our capacity to trust what cannot be proved.

Hewitt beautifully took her time with the gentle, richly decorated sarabande of Variation 13. Effortlessly harnessing the piano’s range of dynamics, she inflected it in a sad, but tender direction — acknowledging our bodily limits, urging us to care for our materiality in new and more concerted ways, to cherish what time erodes and weakens. Once again contrasting the body to the mental sphere without abrogating their integrity, she played the rapid hand-crossing of Variation 14 with an almost exalted sense of freedom. She made the large leaps between registers positively acrobatic, celebrating the mind’s agility, vivacity, imagination and skill at counterfactuals as the reflection in us of God’s image, compensating for the weakness of our ever-decaying body. Hewitt then drenched the canon at the fifth (Variation 15) with all of the mid-life, mid-work, mid-journey abatement and uncertainty of Dante’s Virgil. The mind’s intoxicating liberty to imagine and conjecture, Hewitt implied, cannot mask the soul’s solitude and bereavement. Creating a veritable existential crisis, Hewitt brought out every iota of the soul’s pain, separated from God. She ended powerfully on an open fifth, forcing us to face the question that we cannot answer – the question that matters. Is there a Point?

Hewitt showed us that the second half of the Goldberg draws us out of spiritual isolation to a rebirth of joy, but only through careful steps that come to fruition in a genuine catharsis. Hewitt did not pull back on the royal grandeur of the French Overture (“In my imperfection is thy perfection”) or on the unstoppable rush forward of time in the fugue-like contrapuntal section. She subtlely interpreted Variation 17 to convey a new-found humility — we have the knowledge that we need to live our daily lives even if we are barred from ultimate Wisdom — and developed it further by giving a voluntaristic, affirmative tone to the canon at the sixth (Variation 18), implying that we have no choice but to trust in the robust goodness of creation. In her reading, the ensuing trinity reiterated the musical endorsement of meekness by nurturing a slow tempo in the dance variation (Variation 18), by acknowledging the compensatory character of our flights of intelligence (Variation 19) and by confessing our utter ignorance before God (Canon at the seventh, Variation 21). Hewitt found a mature joy in Variation 21 (embrace of the ephemeral) and in Variation 22 (embrace of our cognitive limitations), returning us to a sense of unison through resignation with the Canon at the octave (Variation 24).

To know that we are mortal, however, is not the same as to come face to face with my death. Hewitt interpreted Variation 25, the famous “Black Pearl,” as Bach’s grappling with the imponderable subjectivity of death, the subject’s dark night of the soul. She brought out a new level of helplessness: we cannot prevent life from ebbing away as we contemplate our inevitable demise. Through phrasing and pauses after diminuendos, Hewitt gave voice to grief. Soft but relentless sobs in the left hand combined effectively with the piano’s capacity to sustain sound, to bring about a powerful lament, leading to a veritable catharsis.

Hewitt paused briefly to allow us to recover before launching into Variation 26 as a surprising rebirth of the soul, illuminated by Faith, delighting in unexpected pastures and a recovery of innocence. Variation 27 focused on the distinctive joy of gratitude in recognition of God’s love. Variation 28 spoke of the eternal youth of the soul, regenerating the body through grace. Variation 29, which Hewitt unleashed with the bold sound of a great organ, proclaimed the Doxology: Thanks be to God from Whom all blessings flow. And since we Live and Move and Have our Being in God’s love, we can return to our finite, ordinary life with a laugh and a smile —in the face of the Absolute, cabbages and turnips, friends and family, musicians and music lovers, matter absolutely, even if we live in the flicker. Hewitt’s Quodlibet danced, and joked, and marveled at the precious human here and now against a background of stars.

The aria returned, utterly serene. My life is mine absolutely because it is not mine at all, but a gift that I receive without deserving it or knowing its ultimate dimension. With her hands on the keyboard for a long silence, Hewitt allowed us to feast on the “peace that passeth understanding.” When she released the keyboard, a man sitting next to me whispered to his wife “this was a religious experience.”

Leon Golub is an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge and has been a lover of classical music for over 50 years.