“Playing of this ease and assurance rarely has such a profound understanding of the material. This is no mechanical journey through the cycle of keys. This is life itself.” The Observer
Recital: Bach, Debussy / Boston
“Hewitt’s musicianship is, and has for some time been, very much her own...Bach’s French Suites were artfully paced and phrased, delicate but unmannered. What was most rewarding was a sense that Bach played on the piano could not only be clear but also sound unapologetically beautiful. The Sarabandes of each suite were transfixing.”
The Boston Globe, December 2011
Recital: Bach, Schubert, Ravel / St Gallen
“Angela Hewitt exceeded even the greatest expectations... Rarely is a piano recital so constantly well phrased and tightly formed. A magical cantabile was audible from the very beginning of Bach’s French Suite No.4. Hewitt created scope for an inner liveliness, and each movement of Bach’s suite became a receptacle full to the brim with imaginativeness.
The Canadian pianist’s playing is as intelligent and spirited as it is playful and sensuous, and new details were constantly unfolding. With a magical blend of charm and penetrative insight, each movement developed organically from the precedent... This was Bach playing at its best.
Hewitt’s playing was equally entrancing in the lesser known Schubert sonata in E flat major Op.122, resulting in an exciting mix of elegance and intelligence. Full of spirit, ideas and delicacy, Hewitt painted both the harmless Viennese touches as well as the broodingly cryptic passages in this calmly conceived performance using a wide palette of the finest luminosity.
Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin was the perfect final piece for this concert... this was a Ravel which fanned out into various subtle degrees of musical ecstasy... The audience won’t be forgetting Angela Hewitt in a hurry!”
St Galler Tagblatt, September 2011
Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos 6, 8 & 9, Orchestra Da Camera di Mantova (Hyperion)
“Angela Hewitt and her orchestral colleagues make the K. 238 and 246 sound wonderful, full of the strut of a young man of incomparable genius. There's scarcely a phrase in these performances that doesn't offer unique insights, and yet the music is never stretched out of shape to provide them. The more familiar K. 271, the Jeunehomme, has seldom sounded more like the masterpiece that it is.
This is one of Hewitt's greatest recorded achievements and in the top echelons of Mozart concerto recordings.”
The Ottawa Citizen, October 2011
“Anyone lucky enough to have been at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in April to hear Angela Hewitt direct Mozart's Piano Concerto No 9 K271 from the keyboard will be pleased with her new ambition to record all 27 concertos for Hyperion. Judging from this first example, it's going to be a journey as revelatory as her exploration of all the major keyboard works of Bach. Hewitt is also a violinist and so brings elegant yet practical intuition to her direction; much of her keyboard articulation, for instance, imitates string-bowing. She is joined in this exciting new endeavour by the fleet-footed Orchestra Da Camera di Mantova, who share her attention to stylistic detail. It's going to be a thrilling ride.”
The Guardian, September 2011
“Hewitt brings a gravitas to the concertos that recalls something of the approach of Arthur Schnabel, who was the first to revive them in modern times. It offers an invigorating contrast to the wanton athleticism and occasional flippancy of younger interpreters and suggests that Hewitt may be on the threshold of an adventure of real importance. I wonder which concerto’s next.”
The Lebrecht Report, October 2011
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Roy Goodman
Mozart: Piano Concerto no. 22 in E flat, K482
“Angela Hewitt made light going of both outer movements, setting a high standard in clear delivery and unflustered narrative where each episode fell into place without overexertion. Both soloist and conductor Roy Goodman emphasised the concerto's subtle dynamic field and intellectual control: a real pleasure for Mozart enthusiasts and admirers of Hewitt's elegant, seemingly effortless mastery of line and detail.”
The Sydney Morning Herald, September 2011
Montreal Symphony / Kent Nagano
Messiaen Turangalila
“Hewitt, playing the Turangalîla in public for the first time, threw herself into the part. She rendered each note, chord, trill and arpeggio exquisitely. She smiled, frowned and laughed with delight as she wound her way through this most treacherous of scores, a score without pattern or direction, a score in which every note has to be considered on its own terms.”
Concertonet.com, September 2011
“Angela Hewitt went through the terrifyingly difficult piano part with prodigious mastery”.
La Presse, September 2011
Recital: Bach, Schubert, Ravel / Schubertiade Festival
“Angela Hewitt belongs to a different generation (from the young soprano Anna Prohaska), yet her sensational Schubertiade début yesterday afternoon was no less exciting. The erstwhile Wunderkind had dazzled the world with her performances of Bach aged only eleven, and it was Bach who took centre stage in this recital too, with the French Suites nos. 4 and 5. Hewitt was fully at one with the composer, bringing out the elegant proportions of the pieces, but also taking the liberty to play the slow movements sensuously and romantically, and the fast movements like dances.
And this was where the ‘magic’, for which Hewitt’s concerts are so renowned, really revealed itself. It is rare to hear Bach played with so much charisma, decisiveness and precision. This was Bach performed at its very best. Hewitt’s performances of Schubert’s rather colourless sonata in E flat minor, reminiscent of Chopin, and particularly of Ravel’s brilliantly ecstatic Tombeau de Couperin were equally remarkable.
But the audience were unanimous that the unforgettable highlight of the evening was Hewitt’s breathtaking performance of the Bach suites, revealed in all their beauty.”
Vorarlberger Nachrichten, August 2011
BBC Proms / BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Andrew Manze
Brahms Intermezzi / Schumann
“The early part of the programme, built around the pianist Angela Hewitt but still themed on Brahms, proved more rewarding. Hewitt began with the first two of Brahms Op 117 Intermezzos, presenting them forthrightly, with a crisp, crystalline tone … before being joined by Manze and the orchestra for Schumann's Introduction and Concert Allegro Op 134. … Lasting just under 15 minutes, it has the feeling of an extended piano improvisation with orchestral reinforcement, an accompanied cadenza if you like. It's not by any means top-quality Schumann, but at the same time, as Hewitt showed, it could not have been composed by anyone else.”
The Guardian, August 2011
“Angela Hewitt delivered two beautifully paced, darkly shaded Brahms Intermezzi, Op 117, Nos 1 and 2. A Gothic interloper, Schumann's Introduction and Concert Allegro, Op 134, saw conductor Andrew Manze and Hewitt forced to take on strange new postures … Hewitt, giving some much-needed welly to her part…”
theartsdesk.com, August 2011
Verbier Festival / Bach Concerti (playing/directing)
“In what was to me the highlight of the festival, two great artists, French violinist Renaud Capucon and Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt, played concertos by Bach and Mozart. When the slow, magical strains of the Largo from Bach's Piano Concerto No. 5 floated through the church into our hearts, I had the feeling that the great meister himself was present there with us, nodding approvingly.”
Haaretz.com, July 2011
O/Modernt Festival, Stockholm / Bach Concerto no. 1 & French Suite no. 4
“The highlight of the concert was the sensational presence of Canadian Angela Hewitt, possibly the leading Bach pianist in the world today. I have been impressed by her on CD before, but having now seen her live, first in the French Suite no. 4 and then in the D Minor Concerto, I understand her greatness even better. She is Bach’s music in every movement, from the rhythmic swaying of her body to her face which all the time seems to sing along with the music, to the smallest movement of her fingers over the keys. Yes, she really crushed all the competition this evening, and answered with triumph the festival’s question: can Bach be here and now.”
Dagens Nyheter, June 2011
“Hewitt expressed herself with gentle insistence in the Bach [French Suite no. 4] with a firm, rounded tone, accentuating notes to give a buoyancy to her interpretation which always feels so convincing …”
“An uninhibited flood of sound with Hewitt in powerful command followed in the D minor Concerto where she directed the introduction to the adagio.”
“This was an absolute success for Hewitt, who played the Sarabande from the French Suite in D major as an encore…”
Svenska Dagblad, June 2011
Britten Sinfonia / Bach & Mozart Keyboard Concerti (playing/directing)
“[Angela Hewitt] is such a great communicator that her renowned sense of line found its way through to the players immediately, making the first and second movements of Bach's keyboard concerto No. 5 (BWV 1056) sound like long, delicious single phrases. And no wonder: she is a violinist, too, and explained in the programme that all the articulation she chooses at the piano imitates string bowing. That sense of line appeared again in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 9 in E flat major, played with the utmost delicacy and finesse, with her poised and intelligent direction from the keyboard wrapping the whole thing in an elegant sheen.”
The Observer, April 2011
“The main event kicked off with Bach’s fifth keyboard concerto led by Angela Hewitt - resplendent in a scarlet ball-dress - from her Fazioli. The outer movements were brisk, businesslike, and brilliant, with the slow middle movement radiating such tender intimacy that it intensified the surrounding silence. Her commanding touch wove a wonderful spell over hushed pizzicato strings.”
The Independent, April 2011
“Hewitt played Bach's keyboard concerto in F minor, a work whose vivacious outer movements are thrown into relief by the serene central largo. An attractive aspect of Hewitt's playing is her way of creating contrast in a way that avoids affectation. Here the spikiness of the outer movements was tempered with warmth while the calmness of the slow movement was simply given space to unfold.”
“Hewitt's approach to Mozart was equally appealing. The E flat major concerto K271 is less familiar than later works in the same key, but it is full of drama on an intimate scale. Hewitt brought to this a sense of suspended stillness before chasing away any shadows with a playful account of the finale.”
The Guardian, April 2011
Recital: Bach / Chopin, Herkulessaal, Munich
“With the richness of her ability, Hewitt mastered an enormous range of effects, from the softest of staccatos to the springiest of legatos. Keeping close to the keyboard and rarely overstepping a mezzo forte, her semiquavers murmured by gently yet firmly, and the swift passages in the Chopin glittered casually. Where a single melody line reigned, such as in the Sarabande from Bach’s French Suite, or in Chopin’s Nocturne in A major Op.32 No.2, it was perfectly articulated and structured. This made her performance of Bach’s gigantic Fugue in C minor all the more amazing, as the audience could hear the multiplicity of such melodic lines from which it was built.
It was about time, in this Chopin anniversary year, for someone to draw our attention to the fact that Bach was an important point of reference for Chopin throughout his life. But when Hewitt combined the two composers in her programme, the Chopin pieces also shed a new light on the Bach pieces. She demonstrated that the French Suite was essentially a series of dances, and their grace and elegance flourished under her moderately swift tempi. Hewitt gave a pure performance; not a concept or an interpretation, and certainly not an excess of virtuosity or artistry, but rather a simple celebration of faultless phrasing, and a charming joy at the abundance of ornamentation.
When Angela Hewitt applied the same simplicity to Chopin’s Sonata in B minor, this piece about death which is so often performed with an oppressive sense of despair, something outrageous happened: the prospect of death became comforting. The main theme of the first movement drifted with an air of unreality, and the middle section of the scherzo was like a hesitant dream. Then, at the beginning of the funeral march, Angela Hewitt seemed to pause for a second in amazement, started the theme extremely quietly, and played the repeat of the theme with certainty and firmness. Death danced along with her, bringing us back to that natural state of soullessness, or rather, with new life breathed into our souls once again.”
Süddeutsche Zeitung, December 2010
Schumann ‘Davidsbündlertänze, Op.6, Kinderszenen, Op. 15, Sonata No.2, Op. 22 (Hyperion)
“Angela Hewitt may be celebrated for her Bach but her repertoire is all-encompassing. And here, in a year of Schumann celebrations, comes a disc of the Davidsbündlertänze, Konderszenen and the Second Sonata where Hewitt’s enviably proficient techniwque and musicianship are complemented by a rare vividness and romantic empathy.”
“Sensational Schumann from Hewitt, ever alive to his troubled and ecstatic poetry.
The current flood of Chopin recordings is in danger of making us forget that this is also Schumann’s year. And here from Angela Hewitt comes a disc to make us marvel anew at Schumann’s Romanticism; at his troubled and ecstatic poetry. Everything is played as if in the heat of first inspiration, a reflection, perhaps, of a recreative richness mirroring Hewitt’s encompassing and versatile repertoire. Few pianists are so brilliantly alive to every passing fancy and whimsicality. And again, few performances could be less studio-bound, more fleet, hallucinatory and above all more deeply imaginative.
Hewitt’s Davidsbündlertänze is a wonder of kaleidoscopically shifting moods with a near-painful immediacy, never more so than in the dreams of No.14 or in the retrospective coda and valedictory waltz. Everything seems lit from within and so, too, is the Kinderszenen. In ‘Träumerei’ Hewitt returns us to a first pristine beauty, long before it succumbed to distorting idiosyncrasy and sentimentality, and the gently troubled world of ‘Child Falling Asleep’ could hardly be more haunting. In the Second Sonata Hewitt’s superb technique allows her a freedom and caprice known to very few of today’s pianists. How she relishes Schumann’s madcap demand to play “as fast as possible – faster – still faster” in the first-movement coda. How delicately she captures all of the Andantino’s wistful, romantic ambiguity. Her finale, too, is as ardent and dazzling as you could wish though I hope Hewitt will give us time in the alternative Presto passionato finale; music, despite Schumann’s preference, of still greater scope and wildness.
Hyperion’s sound is immaculate and Hewitt’s accompanying essay is as alive with insights as her playing, including a telling comment on music being the “wonderful wordless and thus more powerful communicator”. Praise could go no further. This is revelatory Schumann-playing – something to cherish.”
Critic’s Choice, Gramophone Magazine, December 2010
“Angela Hewitt has been recognised less for her efforts in the mainstream German Romantic repertory than for her Bach and Ravel, but this CD may well change that. Her awareness of counterpoint and her skill at putting it across suits Schumann’s colourfully woven textures to perfection. Davidsbündlertänze benefits from fine-pointed voicing, and her sense of light, springing rhythm keeps the élan flying, stopping the music from ever getting too bogged down in its torrent of ideas.
Her G minor Sonata’s opening plunge is perhaps a tad sane, but the central movement’s rapt tenderness comes across with an exquisite stillness. Kinderszenen is balanced just right: never sentimental yet always touching and with a delicious sense of intimacy and fun, judiciously mocking its ‘Important Event’ but opening up some profound, sincere spaces when ‘The Poet Speaks’.”
Performance: 5 stars, BBC Music Magazine, December 2010
“Schumann’s piano music needs a pianist with supple fingers, fluid pacing, a sense of poetry and multitudinous colours. Angela Hewitt possesses all of these and gives immensely polisher performances of three jewels from the mid-1830s. There’s Kinderszenen, infinitely touching; the Davidsbündlertänze, alternately pensive and impetuous; and the turbulent third piano sonata. “
The Times, November 2010
“Angela Hewitt is one of the most versatile pianists of our time: she is as comfortable playing Handel, Bach, Rameau or Couperin as she is with the German ‘classics’ such as Beethoven or Schumann. At a time when many musicians choose to become more and more specialised, performing only music from a certain era, such experienced all-rounders are becoming a rarity …
[Hewitt] is sensitive to every tiny change of mood in the sonata, takes every vacillation and fluctuation in the score seriously, and fills the music with credibility and intensity. She doesn’t smear the notes with a thick layer of sentimentality, but rather fills the sonata with a pleasant freshness of heart. Angela Hewitt’s performance sounds perfectly natural: every note has been thought through, minutely analysed then played with a wonderful poeticism. Hewitt’s Schumann recording presents a captivating new approach to some well-known compositions, and provides a brilliant ending to Schumann’s fruitful anniversary year.”
Klassik.com, February 2011
Angela Hewitt’s Bach Book / Wigmore Hall
World Premieres by Brett Dean, Yehudi Wyner, Robin Holloway, Elena Kats-Chernin, Dominic Muldowney & Kurt Schwertsik.
Bach: English Suite No. 4; Toccata in C Minor BWV911; Three-Part Inventions; Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor BWV903; Transcriptions by Hewitt, Howells, Walton
“Angela Hewitt cannot leave Bach alone. She’s pored over his entire keyboard repertoire for years, playing it live, recording it in the studio, everything dispatched with an elegant sparkle and beating heart. Now, following the pianist Harriet Cohen in the 1930s, she’s devised a “Bach Book” — a volume of new shortish pieces from contemporary composers invited to tread in Bach’s footsteps. Three of these novelties, commissioned by Wigmore Hall, emerged during her subtle and involving Saturday recital, played on Hewitt’s current instrument of choice for Bach: a Fazioli piano. …
Yehudi Wyner …added his own chill [to Fantasia on BACH] by constructing his piece from the motto formed from Bach’s name, plus its retrograde inversion. …
Brighter and happier Bachiana arrived with the Australian Brett Dean and his Prelude and Chorale. The first half was pure joy: a crazy cascade of figurations in the spirit of Bach’s exuberant early toccatas. Reverence took over for the chorale, a straight Bach transcription …
Holloway’s opening crunch of notes could have come from a film score by Bernard Herrmann; while the arietta movement emerged strikingly shy and hesitant, English to the core. Hewitt and this deliciously quizzical piece were perfectly matched.
Weaved around lay the real Bach, glorious and unfiltered. Sunshine radiated from Hewitt’s crisp dispatch of the English Suite No 4; steely power pervaded the C minor Toccata, BWV 911. Best of all, the three-part Inventions shook off the pedagogical corset to become shimmering delights of dancing colours, topped by pure, bleak tragedy. A classy night.”
The Times, November 2010
“Hewitt started with the flamboyant roulades of Bach’s own Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, where he seems to be challenging later composers to outdo him. Taking up where the master left off, Kurt Schwertsik’s Fantasia and Fuga Op 105 operated in the style of Shostakovich’s preludes and fugues, tapping into Bach’s exuberance and getting the fugue to bowl along, even if it came to an end where Bach might have delivered his clinching statement.
The two other contemporary composers in Tuesday’s recital interpreted Hewitt’s invitation more liberally. The best new piece was Dominic Muldowney’s Fantasia on BACH, which played with Bach’s favourite forms as it jumped from chorale and fugue to a two-part invention, mixing humour and scholarship with a light touch. Elena Kats-Chernin took a more straightforward line in her Bach Study, a homage to his G Major Cello Suite, but the moto perpetuo that she set in motion ran out of steam in an unsatisfying way.
In each of them Hewitt was the thoughtful guide. While her Bach avoids the extremes of imagination of a Glenn Gould or the intellectual rigour of Tatiana Nikolayeva, she has a fluency that shows how beautifully Bach’s keyboard works can be played on the modern piano. A group of three-part inventions and the A Minor Prelude and Fugue BWV 894 were nicely characterful in Hewitt’s unexaggerated way. The three encores were well deserved.”
Financial Times, November 2010
“Angela Hewitt's colourful and extrovert way with Bach may offend scholarly dry sticks, especially when rendered in the brilliance of her preferred Fazioli piano, as it was here. Yet, for the generation following that of her fellow Canadian Glenn Gould, Hewitt has become almost synonymous with Bach on the piano.
Hewitt's two Wigmore recitals are a chance to rediscover why this is so, and why Hewitt is also much more than this.”
The Guardian, November 2010
Bach: Complete Works for Piano (Hyperion)
“With this release [Angela Hewitt] has once again made a lasting mark on the discography of Bach recordings with a torch of the very brightest kind…
This Canadian pianist with perfectionist tendencies has tackled Bach’s keyboard works like no other over the years, in ever more original recording projects and concerts around the globe…
In the course of her studies of the key works of the pianistic repertoire (from Rameau and Couperin, via Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin and Schumann, to Ravel and Messiaen), she has developed a breadth of inner perspective that has no equal.”
Bayerische Rundfunk, October 2010
Beethoven Sonatas, Op.10, No.2; Op.26; Op.27, No.2, ‘Moonlight’; Op.90 (Hyperion)
“…the spotlight is on the Moonlight, and Hewitt’s performance is totally riveting. Adopting a flowing yet sustained tempo for the opening movement, she creates a beautifully veiled and hypnotic sound despite consciously overriding Beethoven’s specific direction to hold down the pedal throughout. The ensuing Allegretto is no less persuasive especially in the strongly rustic quality she brings to the middle section, whilst the Presto agitato balances tremendous finger dexterity with passion and urgency. …”
BBC Music Magazine, August 2010
“A luminous Moonlight Sonata casts a spell.
I’m playing catch-up (fast) with Angela Hewitt’s cycle of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas on Hyperion. Having started on this quest late, I powered through two volumes then spent a week soaking up the new volume three, and through intensive listening I’m struck by a particular perspective. Hewitt’s pristine articulation and clarity of thought, line and feeling are, as ever, inimitable. But I have not been as aware of the sound of her beloved Fazioli piano as I am in this series. In volume three its flexibility and responsiveness are integral features of the pianist’s interpretation. It serves her well throughout the Variations of the opus 26 Sonata, from the dry bass-bounce to the soft lyricism; the Moonlight opening movement is swathed in luminosity, while within the tempestuous moments of the finale the instrument rings with drama. And as well as I know Hewitt’s playing, from Bach to Schumann, I am still surprised at just how expressively, and romantically, the great Canadian plays this music.”
The Herald, August 2010
Basel Chamber Orchestra / Bach Keyboard Concerti (playing and directing)
“Listening to Angela Hewitt play Bach is like stepping back into a more elegant age. … the manner of her playing takes us back to a time when instrumentalists felt that every phrase should be given its own shape, colour and distinct place in the world. There are no stray details, awkward corners or unwise tempos in a Hewitt concert. Everything has been pondered and perfectly placed. And the execution is as pristine as the conception. …
No wonder she now packs the Wigmore with ecstatic admirers."
The Times, May 2010
“The very first bar of the D major concerto was one of those moments which seem to pack an evening’s worth of experience into about three seconds. First there was the shock of the beefy, piano-plus-strings sound. Decades ago this was how Bach’s concertos always sounded, but these days we’re used to the more wiry, transparent sound of the harpsichord. This surprise was immediately pushed aside by another – the electric tension in that simple, three-note opening phrase, which grew from small beginnings as if it were leaping towards us.
This promised something full of thrilling dancing energy, which is exactly what we got. Hewitt’s great gleaming Fazioli piano looked as if it would dominate the proceedings, but she kept her left hand light as a feather, and when she did let rip (which she had to at times, to avoid an enervating sense of “holding back”) it was to decorate ends of phrases with grand harpsichord-like flourishes. It was the gesture that was big, rather than the sound itself.
What these players proved is that in Baroque music you really can have your cake and eat it. You can use the greater power and expressivity of modern instruments to make the “period” style of the music more vivid. In the G minor concerto Hewitt made a tiny hesitation in a phrase each time it came round – a nice balletic touch, but would it have worked so well without the piano’s sensitivity? Another keen pleasure of this concert was the way Hewitt softened Bach’s sometimes severe outlines with playful and very French-sounding ornaments. Everything she played had an air of joyous spontaneity, even the chastely beautiful Largo from the F minor Concerto, which she played as an encore.”
The Telegraph, May 2010
“Angela Hewitt is a phenomenon. …the Canadian’s polish is awesome. The music just flows through her fingers, and there is a sense of liberation in her playing that is magical: can it really be this effortless? Can it really flow this smoothly? Well, yes it can; and with Angela Hewitt it does. The sheer purity of her single notes in the slow movement of the Fifth Concerto was heart-stopping, and the Seventh Concerto in her hands gleamed with elegance. Hers is not the meatiest Bach in the book; but it is probably the most sophisticated.”
The Herald, May 2010
Recital: Schumann, Brahms / Wigmore Hall, London
“After a flinty, fiery performance of the 18-year-old Brahms’s Scherzo in E flat minor, Hewitt turned to the great F minor Sonata: five movements of a prodigious 20-year-old’s response to all that his ears had heard and his heart had known. Hewitt, keeping a formidable intellectual and physical grip on the sonata’s form and direction, set up a thrilling ebb and flow of expressive power. She seemed to take exuberant pleasure in a youthful energy that at any time could draw back into itself, and which was stilled into two disarmingly nonchalant yet ambivalent and shadowy slow movements.”
The Times, April 2010
“Angela Hewitt's Schumann and Brahms recital felt like a very definite artistic statement. Don't pigeonhole me as a woman who plays Bach, it seemed to say. …
In the Schumann pieces, Hewitt and her preferred Fazioli piano took time to find their voice. But as the music grew darker, she asserted firm control. There was none of the winsomeness that some players look for in these pieces. The sombre shifts of the E flat minor Albumblatt were especially impressive.
Hewitt never allows her Brahms to linger – always a good rule. The variations, written in the turbulent aftermath of Schumann's attempted suicide and Brahms's growing feeling for Clara, were tender but severe.
Hewitt then launched both the Scherzo and sonata with the terrific attack these pieces demand. But it was in the lyrical ardour of some of Brahms's second subjects, and the andante second movement of the sonata, that she reached real heights. The beautifully sustained andante, which seems to slip in and out of the harmonic world of Beethoven's Pathétique sonata, was the highlight of the evening. Truly a woman who can play Brahms, too.”
The Guardian, April 2010
Recital: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann / Bamberg Musikverein
“Hewitt played the chromatic fantasy and fugue in D minor BWV 903 with a clarity of structure which she maintained through the ever-increasing density of the polyphonic lines. It was a treat to hear how Hewitt allowed the fugue to grow from the fantasy, and how wonderfully she coaxed the dynamics back down for the reprise. These weren’t the only treats on offer on this spring evening. …
Her interpretation of Beethoven was marked by a keen sense of tone, eloquent creative power, cantabile, clarity and lively accentuation. During the melancholy largo, the audience seemed to stop breathing to listen the more acutely. … Brahms’ Variations on a theme of Robert Schumann were full of the spirit of the composer born two hundred years ago. Both Hewitt’s leggiero playing and her song-like melodic lines were gripping. As the final variation faded away from a triple piano, the audience held their breath collectively, then applauded enthusiastically.
Hewitt was not only in control of her instrument, but also of her audience. Her refined musicality was in evidence in Schumann’s sonata in G minor, especially in the andantino in 6/8. Hewitt’s performance of the simple, one-line melody of the legato with the right hand over portato triplets in the left was breath-taking. This piano recital was simply sensational.”
Fränkischer Tag, March 2010
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (play/direct) / Bach / Carnegie Hall, New York
“Angela Hewitt was making her debut with the orchestra, performing Bach's Keyboard Concerto in D minor. It was probably programmed to underscore the Bach affinities of the new Maxwell Davies piece on the second half, but her radiant performance made a bid for stealing the show. Purists from the historical-performance camp might have quibbled with some of Hewitt’s dynamic swells in the first movement, but for those willing to imagine what Bach might have done had a concert grand been available to him, her brilliantly executed cadenzas and abundant and fleet florid passage work were breathtaking. Elsewhere, she crafted pellucid cantabile lines in the Adagio and darted about playfully with the orchestra in the final movement.”
Musical America, February 2010
Chamber Concert with Isabelle Faust & Stephen Stirling: Schumann, Brahms
Wigmore Hall, London
“[Brahms Horn Trio] received a magnificent ¬outing, wonderful partnerships emerging between the ¬players as Brahms's lilting melodies wafted in and out of Hewitt's gleaming Fazioli.”
The Guardian, January 2010
Handel and Haydn (Hyperion)
“Angela Hewitt’s notes reveal some secrets of her interpretation, a mixture of heartfelt response to the music and rigorous scholarship. What she does not discuss is her ability to transfer the quality of harpsichord (for Handel) and fortepiano (for Haydn) to her beloved Fazioli piano. It’s neither mimicry nor trickery. Rather, she distils the essence of the original instruments without compromising her out-and-out commitment to the modern keyboard.
The large-scale Haydn E flat Sonata is superb, above all the middle movement in an astonishing and other-worldly E major. Hewitt’s dynamic range is bold – she refers to Haydn’s felling for the richness of English Broadwood pianos – and the glittering facility of the final Presto is thrilling.
Altogether a splendid contribution to these composers’ anniversary year.”
Instrumental Choice, BBC Music Magazine, October 2009
Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra / Roberto Minczuk
Mozart Piano Concerto no. 21, K467
“Hewitt coaxed from the instrument the most delicious of sounds, the runs a shower of pearls and the melodies fragrant as a rose. This was Mozart playing of the highest distinction, with Hewitt's musical concentration evident at every turn.”
Calgary Herald, September 2009
Recital: Bach, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Beethoven / Fairmount Auditorium, Cleveland
“The world has a fair share of gifted pianists who make spectacles of themselves … and others who care about nothing but the music. Angela Hewitt is an artist who draws attention only to the ideas at her fingertips.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 2009
Recital: Bach Goldberg Variations / Royal Festival Hall, London
“No pianist today is more closely associated with playing Bach than Angela Hewitt, and throughout her career the Goldberg Variations has been her signature work. It's 10 years since Hewitt's much-admired recording of the Goldberg first appeared, and in that time, Hewitt's approach to Bach has become more relaxed and naturally expressive.
That was obvious in this performance, whether in the way she unfolded the opening aria of the Goldberg, introducing tiny hesitations and emphases to define its contours more sharply, or the unbuttoned, almost rhapsodic sweep with which she shaped some of the later variations such as the chromatic 25th, with its final clashing dissonance given a stabbing fierceness. By dutifully observing every one of Bach's repeats, Hewitt created the chance to conjure up yet more contrasts within a single variation using different colouring and accentuation, or occasionally by turning its dynamic scheme upside down.
Yet the clarity and formal coherence were still immaculate. Hewitt never treated this technically demanding work as a showpiece, but it's a huge technical feat in itself to make every contrapuntal line so independent and distinctive.”
The Guardian, May 2009
Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Books I & II; (Hyperion)
“Angela Hewitt made her first recording of the 48 Preludes and Fugues in the late 1990s, as part of her Hyperion cycle of Bach's keyboard works. Her return to them seems to have been prompted by a sense of greater familiarity with the music itself, matured over 10 years of playing the pieces in recital. In fact, not a great deal about her performances has changed […] What shines through her playing most of all is a sovereign control of touch, texture and dynamic, so that every line is perfectly characterised and distinct. This is by no means the only approach to playing Bach's masterpiece on a piano, as the historic, equally valid recordings by artists as contrasting as Edwin Fischer, Glenn Gould and Sviatoslav Richter demonstrate, but it's a measure of Hewitt's achievement that she invites comparison with pianists as great as those.”
The Guardian, 5 stars, April 2009
“Angela Hewitt's Bach has long been a thing of wonder […] and this four-CD set of both books of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier again illustrates how she can deploy the timbres and technical attributes of the piano to animate the music in the most sensitive way. Her palette of colours is judiciously chosen, her variety of touch and dynamics gauged so that each prelude and fugue has a character of its own and contributes something special to Bach's iridescent kaleidoscope of musical invention.”
The Telegraph, 5 stars, April 2009
“A decade after her dazzling recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Angela Hewitt has done it again. Literally. Fresh from her Bach World Tour - in which she performed the work in 58 cities in 21 countries on six continents - she has […] made a new recording of this landmark work for keyboard. Why? Because, she says, while living and growing with the music during the year-long world tour, her interpretations changed. Internalising the material, she uncovered a new-found freedom within it; opportunities to throw fresh colour into the mix, to loosen up, to be more expressive, echoing Bach's compulsion to revise and refine the work over the years. […]
The result is a precious document, which draws upon her development as a person and a performer over the past 10 years. Playing of this ease and assurance rarely has such a profound understanding of the material. This is no mechanical journey through the cycle of keys. This is life itself.”
The Observer, March 2009
“I can’t think of another player who has immersed herself in this repertoire more deeply or more comprehensively. The Well-tempered Clavier is inexhaustibly fascinating and Hewitt’s new live recording reveals so much that is usually hidden.”
Classical Music Magazine, August 2009
“In her new recording, she seems less concerned than before to emulate the crisp, slightly clipped quality of Bach’s keyboard instruments with plucking mechanism, and conceives the marvellous works more pianistically, with greater expressive freedom, but never romanticises or sentimentalises the music […]. As ever with Hewitt, the joie de vivre she finds in this music remains exhilarating. Even if you own her old set, this new one cries out to be heard.”
Sunday Times, May 2009
"Listening to Angela Hewitt's latest thoughts on Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier alongside her late-1990s Hyperion cycle... it appears that her interpretations haven't changed so much as evolved, intensified and, most important, internalised. This perception is enhanced by a closed sonic image, plus the leaner, more timbrally diverse qualities of Hewitt's Fazioli concert grand that contrast with her earlier recording's mellower, more uniform Steinway. Yet I readily credit Hewitt's pianistic prowess for more acutely differentiated legato and detached articulation this time around, together with a wider range of melodic inflection.
While both versions hold equal validity and stature, Hewitt's remake ultimately digs deeper, with more personalised poetry."
Gramophone, Editor's Choice, June 2009
"This is Hewitt's second recording of the '48' in a decade. Fifty-eight live performances over 15 months gave her generous opportunity to mull over her approach. […]
Hewitt is no harpsichordist manqué. She takes full advantage of the piano's potential […] Her quiet sustained tone is as silky and restrained as a clavichord; the opening of the first Prelude is breathtaking, creating a sense of embarking on a sustained pilgrimage throughout the whole set."
BBC Music Magazine, 5 stars, April 2009
“One would need half-a-page here to do full critical justice to Angela Hewitt's second recording of the "48" in a decade. Sublime in its simplest subtleties, hundreds of tiny gems of rhythmic and expressive elasticity bring characteristic layer upon layer to what is still essentially a most reverent and uncontrived reading. The Fazioli piano, her instrument of choice in her recent Couperin and Rameau recordings, is tonally perfect for Hewitt's controlled, light-fingered approach, each fugal voice speaking with perfect clarity and sustain, allowing the pianist to embrace an astonishingly vast range of dynamic narrative. If you buy just one recording this year, let it be this.”
Sunday Tribune (Ireland), 5 stars, March 2009
Recital: Bach, Beethoven, Fauré, Ravel / Konzerthaus, Berlin
“At a time when every musician has to find his own idiosyncrasy to distinguish himself from all the others on the market, performances like that of Angela Hewitt have become rare. … Hewitt simply makes music in a fantastically rich way, be it virtuoso, structural, sonata, Bach or Beethoven. And to all this abundance, she adds her distinctive pianistic personality.”
Berliner Zeitung, December 2008
Beethoven Sonatas for Cello and Piano Disc / Daniel Müller-Schott (Hyperion)
“The success of this duo partnership is very evident in this first volume of Daniel Müller-Schott and Angela Hewitt’s Beethoven cycle. They respond with imagination and flexibility to Beethoven’s mercurial changes of mood, one moment tender and reflective, then bold and dynamic, and are particularly good at pinpointing some of the more daring and musically prophetic elements in the Op. 5 Sonatas; I’m thinking of the marvellous way in which they introduce unexpected change of key in the middle of the first Allegro in the F major, and the tremendous release of tension in the Allegro molto that follows the protracted silences in the dramatic introduction to the G minor.”
BBC Music Magazine, December 2008
“Angela Hewitt and Daniel Müller-Schott are forming quite a chamber-music partnership, following their Bach Gamba Sonatas album of 2007. This follow-up is similarly delightful, the pair of a mind – and a nimble, elegant one at that. They find the colour and fantasy in these Beethoven sonatas that, as with that Bach disc, give unalloyed pleasure.”
Gramophone, December 2008
“These are the performances of great finesse and musical insight, whether in No 2’s hushed, brooding slow introduction, or the excursion to mysterious remote keys in the first-movement coda of No 1.”
The Telegraph, November 2008
50th Birthday concerts at Wigmore Hall
“Joy is the paramount quality that Angela Hewitt’s piano playing radiates, as was evident in a group of 50th birthday recitals she gave last week. It might manifest itself in the smiling exuberance of a Bach gigue or, at the opposite extreme, in the way she can so fully enter into the intense, introspective world of a solemn slow movement by Beethoven, but ever-present is a sense that she is deriving pleasure from what she does and in communicating it to others.”
The Telegraph, September 2008