Hewitt's recital covers a substantial part of Emmanuel Chabrier's music for solo piano, but its centrepiece is rightly the Dix Pièces Pittoresques, the set of character studies, published in 1881, which is the nearest the composer ever came to composing a large-scale piano cycle. Every one of those miniatures has a flavour all its own, though the attractive surfaces of Chabrier's music sometimes do its cause no favours; beneath all the charm and wit, serious musical points are often being made.
The piano writing can be deceptive too; there are some technical challenges to be met and though Hewitt is on top of all of them, her playing is sometimes too emphatic and never quite achieves the poise that would allow Chabrier's quirkiness to sound totally unforced. An edge of stridency in the sound of the piano sometimes emphasises that as well, but as there are not many recordings of this music we should not be too picky about this one.
