A long Bach road

“The 48” is not a new multivitamin, although it fortifies pianists, composers and listeners. It is not a strand of DNA, although it sort of is in Western music. It is not a brand of breakfast cereal, but close. “Make it your daily bread,” Robert Schumann advised young musicians.

“The 48” is shorthand for Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” which Angela Hewitt played at Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Orange County over the weekend. In a 2 1/2 -hour concert Friday she tackled Book I, which contains 24 preludes and fugues, one for each of the 12 keys of the scale, major and minor. Sunday night’s Book II, 24 longer and more complex preludes and fugues, was well over three hours.

To keep strong for one of the most challenging physical and mental marathons a pianist can undertake onstage, I’m told Hewitt fortified herself with canned sardines at intermission -- she’s Canadian. Her concentration was extraordinary. She gave phrases beautiful shape. Her playing was strong and vivid and filled the large theater.

These marathon recitals were, of course, completely and utterly removed from anything Bach intended or could have imagined. The WTC, as it is also known, was produced as a series of exercises in counterpoint. The preludes and fugues took advantage of new tunings that made certain mathematical compromises, allowing keyboard instruments to play in all keys.

Most likely, Bach played these pieces on a clavichord, a small keyboard instrument that had a more flexible tone than a harpsichord but could hardly be heard. He meant them for an audience of one, the musician, or, at most, teacher and pupil. They are arranged encyclopedically by key, moving up the chromatic scale, not as a set for concert performance, not that clavier recitals even existed in Bach’s day.

The urge to play “The 48” can be, however, irresistible for a modern performer. All pianists grow up playing these pieces. Contained in them is the foundation of Western harmony. They are great music.

The C-major Prelude, which opens the first book with a series of arpeggios, is one of the most famous pieces of Baroque music. It is a precursor of Wagner’s evocation of the Rhine at the opening of his “Ring” cycle and also of Minimalism. Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Takemitsu all took Schumann’s advice, often playing a prelude and fugue first thing to get the composing juices flowing. Tunes in some of the livelier Book I preludes are good enough to have been turned into hit records by the Swingle Singers and early pop groups.

Indeed, the only way to make the WTC work in concert is to treat it as modern music. A pianist must become a tour guide through jungles and vistas of harmony and counterpoint. Eighteenth century pedagogy must become contemporary adventure and drama.

Hewitt chose the biggest, fanciest vehicle available on which to embark. Her 10-foot, 3-inch Fazioli piano, with four pedals, was as technologically removed from an old-timey clavichord as is a 2007 Ferrari Scaglietti from a horse and buggy.

She then found an excellent middle road that would carry counterpoint across a grand expanse of space while conveying intimate details of the intersecting individual lines that are at the heart of the WTC. She kept things moving, holding the audience’s attention. She is a lyrical player with a light, agile touch. But she is not immune to displays of bravura and can produce a brilliant sound when she wants. She didn’t insist upon that monster Fazioli for nothing.

Yet under even the best of circumstances, listening to the cycle is no easy matter. I find myself overwhelmed by too much fugal logic. Following subjects and countersubjects through their thorn-strewn, intricate Cartesian paths can be addictive for a while but contains a certain inherent tedium.

As music written with few indications of how it should sound, though, the WTC can be inspiration for the creative performer. Glenn Gould discovered a whole wonderfully weird world in them. Daniel Barenboim and Sviatoslav Richter have attempted to dig deep to the depths of bottomless music.

Hewitt is not quite so imaginative a prober. Her Bach remains fairly close to the surface, which makes it feel on the authentic side, even when it is not. She can be a tad too tame.

I found at times I was entranced by her well-shaped fugue subjects and her sense of rigorous contrapuntal drama. But, even with a score on my lap, I was often happier to drift off into the resonances of Bach’s harmonies, which she made thrilling.

As a tour guide, Hewitt never leaves the civilized world behind with her WTC. She takes you nowhere unexpected. But she knows where all the best places are.

mark.swed@latimes.com