Angela Hewitt in concert, October 2013
There were two silences. One I had expected.

Where the final contrapunctus breaks, unfinished,

she had asked us to be silent and we were.
It was as if Bach had just died, as if

that vast creating mind had vanished suddenly,

gone into some dimension inaccessible to us.
We felt the miracle of what we’d heard, the mystery

of the source of rivers and of their dispersal finally

into the sea. And then she played a late chorale:
Now before your throne I come. It ended.

Silence again, and then the clapping came

in great cascades and we were on our feet.