A lifetime's experience served up in two hours of musical heaven.

Ahead of her Australian tour, the Canadian pianist explains why communicating with audiences is vital.

Angela Hewitt wouldn’t be the first Canadian pianist to record Bach’s Goldberg Variations twice and, like Glenn Gould’s second performance, Hewitt takes longer over her remake. Her first, recorded in 1999, had critics throwing superlatives around like confetti: “If you only buy one Bach album in this anniversary year, let it be this one. A desert-island disc!” said the man in London’s Sunday Times. But my tropical island might not seem the perfect paradise if Hewitt’s was the only set of Goldbergs on offer. In a world where John Butt exists and Mahan Esfahani has just recorded an exceptionally nuanced performance on harpsichord, complete with an appropriately juicy tuning temperament, it feels like Hewitt is trying to catch an argument that has long since moved on. Of course, it’s that very dependability that will endear this disc to many and, on its own terms, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Hewitt’s performance. Eyebrows might be raised when she ignores some repeats during the opening Aria – her first version was branded with the strapline “Includes all repeats!” – but otherwise her immaculate voice-leading, rapid-fire articulation and slipstream… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a…

In Volume 6 of her magisterial traversal of the Beethoven piano sonatas, Angela Hewitt reminds us that Beethoven could be the god of small (musical) things. Her performances of the three “little” Sonatas in this set illustrate this perfectly. The Schubertian (Hewitt’s apt term) Allegretto of the Op. 14 No 1 Sonata has an ambience similar to that of Mozart’s last Piano Concerto, the composer smiling through tears. Another example is the delightful, slightly torpid four-note intoduction of the Op. 49 No 1 Sonata. The final movement of the Op. 49 No 2 is the same Minuet as the one in Beethoven’s early Septet and Hewitt makes it just as charming. By the time we come to the Op. 31 No 1 Sonata, we’ve really turned a corner: the slow movement is marked Adagio grazioso – almost a contradiction in terms and, at 11 minutes, by far the longest movement on this CD. Hewitt plays along in beautifully cantabile mode with the notion that it’s both tribute to and parody of Italian opera. The Op. 81a Sonata Les Adieux refers to Beethoven’s separation from his patron and probable… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Carl Vine announces a “fantastic year of debuts” for the 2017 season along with the return of some audience favourites. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Media recluse he may be, but Sokolov in Salzburg is a definite must-have for all piano aficionados. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Angela Hewitt, as they used to say in old-school classical CD reviews, is currently at the peak of her pianistic powers, and having just released a well-upholstered and characteristically thoughtful recording of Bach’s The Art of Fugue now turns her attention to Franz Liszt – his sempiternal B Minor Sonata placed alongside the earlier Dante Sonata and Petrarca Sonnets. B Minor was a significant key for both Bach and Liszt, and Liszt’s mass of sound integrates fugal grandeur within a narrative framework that delights in extreme shifts of mood; harmonic non sequiturs and melodic flashbacks are glued together by rhythmic markers in the sand. With fingers expertly primed to unpick the inner workings of Liszt’s fugal writing, Hewitt is also on top of the overall trajectory of Liszt’s large-scale dramatics. Never ostentatious or showy, her mission, apparently, is to show that the B Minor Sonata adds up to more than a sequence of grandstanding set pieces. Hewitt fesses up in her booklet notes that when, in her teens, she first encountered the Sonata she came away thinking “what an awful piece,” but she enters its world with the zeal of a reformed smoker. Could some of the descending passagework near…

Buy this album on iTunes: Bach: The Art of Fugue – Angela Hewitt Bach’s final work, The Art of Fugue, is a formidable contrapuntal challenge for any musician – it’s essentially the Mount Everest of Baroque intricacy, containing some of his most devilishly complex part-writing. The work, consisting of fourteen fugues and four canons, is written utilising a different permutation of the same theme in each part, so Bach’s single short theme is presented in dozens of different ways. The four-bar theme is heard in augmentation (longer note values), diminution (shorter note values), inverted (upside-down), and in a whole variety of canons. Such an intensely cerebral work will acquire an air of mystery in any case, and the fact that Bach died before he could finish it has only added to its reputation. Perhaps that’s why it has taken renowned Bach pianist Angela Hewitt quite so long to tackle this behemoth; she’s been recording Baroque works on the piano for many years, but she’s only added The Art of Fugue to her repertoire in 2012. It may have taken her a little while, but it’s been well worth waiting for,… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month…

Angela Hewitt has made a career as the other great Bach pianist from Toronto, though like her predecessor, Glenn Gould, she has recorded much more widely – from Couperin to Ravel. This is the third instalment in an ongoing cycle of Mozart’s Piano Concerti – this one devoted to two of his larger scale later works, No 22 with its varied instrumental accompaniment and the grand C Minor with its inventive clarinet obbligato. Hewitt has chosen live performances – though you’d never guess it, so quiet and unobtrusive is the audience. And while there is an occasional blurred or overplayed passage where the left hand dominates, the variety of colour is amazing. Her performances are informed as much by earlier piano practice as individual insight. She is joined by the National Arts Centre Orchestra who are equally vividly caught by the microphones, bringing out those inner incisive rhythms that we associate so strongly with Mozart. These are personal performances which admirably capture much of Hewitt’s live allure and we must remember that these concerti were ‘cutting edge’ when Mozart wrote them in the mid 1780s – so new in fact, that this was a mere decade after… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt has played the music of Gabriel Fauré all her life. As she admits in her notes, he is an elusive composer. Aspects of Schumann surface in his early Nocturnes, their accompaniments containing tricky cross-rhythms, yet the Valse Caprice No 1, Op 30 has all the surface sparkle of Saint-Saëns. Fauré is too subtly complex to be regarded as a mere salon composer, although for years that is how pianists thought of him. Hewitt is aware of the contradictory sides composer, and does not restrain herself in terms of sheer power of attack when necessary. The central part of her program consists of three Nocturnes. No 6 in D Flat is the best known, a waltz with a seemingly simple (but harmonically unpredictable) opening melody supported by rippling arpeggios. No 13, from 1921, pares back all superfluous decoration to reveal the composer’s final thoughts for his favourite instrument (like Beethoven, Fauré went deaf in old age). Hewitt’s phrasing, dynamic variations and strength serve the composer well. Her recital closes with the early Ballade (later scored by the composer for piano and orchestra). Here I felt her to be too heavy-handed. The dry, light touch of Jean-Philippe Collard…

An aristocrat of the piano turns Bachian teaser with part one of a two-part fugue-fest.

Inside the brilliant but often misunderstood Jacqueline du Pré; plus pianists Willems, Hough and Hewitt and our Aussie Festivals Guide. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in