Dear Angela,
What a delight to discover -- very late, obviously -- that you do now, indeed, have your own website!
I recall asking you a few years ago after one of your glorious recitals in Montreal's Pollack Hall. if you wouldn't please entertain the notion of having such a site. I admit I had purely selfish motives for asking, as I had been missing too many of your Montreal performances. I hoped that such a website would inform your public of your concert schedule and of when to expect you in town. Well, at the time you listened charmingly, as only you can do, but you confessed you were reluctant to consider such a public move. How wonderful to see you have changed your mind! And why am I not surprised that, once you have decided to do something, you have done it in spades? The site, as everyone is telling you, is first rate. (I, too, love the photo of you and your vacuum. That is much more charming than just alerting us to your next concert).
Along with all your personal contributions to the site, I have enjoyed reading the many comments of others in your guestbook. It is amusing to find, quite appropriately, so many references to your clothes, your hair, your shoes. As if your enormous musicality were not enough! But I chuckle only because it reminds me of stories a musician friend of mine told me some years ago about you, and of her own young daughter's many meetings with (against?) the youthful Angela in Ottawa piano competitions -- which you usually won, by the way. Apparently everyone would wait with bated breath to see the outfits you would appear in! You obviously had a love of fashion from a tender age.
I have fond memories of several warm conversations with your mother after your Montreal recitals here, and send the hope she still is well. I love it that you have played for her and the others in the senior's home where she now resides. I hope you will share with them again.
Continued marvellous success to you, so richly deserved. And I look forward to your next visit to Montreal. According to your website's postings, though, I will have to be patient to wait for your next offerings here.
An aside -- need I tell you how closely I identify with your playing? I admire many wonderful pianists, including the late, great Glenn Gould, whom some of your fans say would envy you -- but I suspect instead you would have baffled him as a somewhat alien spirit. But I do not so much admire your musicianship as if it were something outside myself to be admired, but rather I feel my soul inhabiting your music. You are my voice. If you have such an effect on others, you have reached the summit.
-- With gratitude,
Margaret Hofmann