IT is not often, at any time of year, let alone January, that a performer thanks the audience for being so quiet and attentive. In truth, Angela Hewitt was so enthralling that no-one would have dared break the spell. Coughs and sneezes there were none.

She spent the whole evening on Bach’s French Suites, six groups of Baroque dances. Though she must by now know them like the back of her hand, she brought unstinting freshness and a missionary enthusiasm to her pianism. Not that she was histrionic: her fingers did the talking.

All six suites begin with an allemande, a courante and a sarabande. Her allemandes were remarkably smooth, delivered in a creamy legato in the right hand, often against detached, staccato figures in the left. Her courantes were mainly friskily Italianate, as in the tricky cross-rhythms of Suite No 2, which were expertly precise.

But in her sarabandes she developed the deepest melancholy from the simplest material, nowhere more than in No 5, which was soulful despite its major key. Towards the end of each suite she became more carefree (though never casual), so that a couple of gavottes were positively jaunty and one air became a breath-taking moto perpetuo.

The best she kept to last. Two hours in, still utterly focused, she delivered the dazzling gigue to No 5 with sensational clarity. There is no finer player of Bach alive today.