A performance of Bach’s Art of Fugue, the great composer’s musical treatise on this most austere of forms, was challenging programming even by the standards of the Brighton Festival’s now traditional Piano Recital at Glyndebourne.

Challenging both to the pianist, Angela Hewitt, and to her audience. A total of 18 complicated related pieces played without a break adding up to 90 minutes without an interval.

But this is Bach, so what sounds like a bore was a riveting experience.

Helped by the Fazioli piano she chose to play on, Ms Hewitt’s interpretation had few frills, great clarity of texture, no eccentricities and great beauty of tone.

She preceded her performance by giving a short analysis of the work, a help to many, but possibly a hindrance to a few. She discussed the problematic ending where the music ends abruptly, possibly, so the legend has it, because of Bach’s death. Her solution was to leave the music uncompleted and after a long silence end the performance with a solemn Bach Chorale, a moving climax to what was a memorable recital.

Technological note: an iPad was used and the page-turning was done by foot pedal, an invention which will mean the demise of the page turner.