Piano Greats: Angela Hewitt
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Toccata in D major, BWV912
We tend to think of Bach primarily as a master-organist, but his contemporaries – and those who kept his memory alive, such as his pioneering biographer Johann Forkel (1749-1818) – knew that he was equally skilled at any keyboard instrument. To hear Bach play at the harpsichord or clavichord was to experience musicianship at its highest level: a banquet of colours, imaginative effects and wholly unexpected touches of improvisation and fantasy.
Bach’s seven keyboard Toccatas (1705-1714) serve as Exhibit A. The very name meant “Touch-piece”: the organ toccatas of Frescobaldi and his German pupil Froberger celebrated the sheer physicality of playing the keyboard in the so-called Stylus Fantasticus, defined by the philosopher Athanasius Kircher in 1650 as:
…the most free and unrestrained method of composing; it is bound to nothing, neither to words nor to a melodic subject; it was instituted to display genius and to teach the hidden design of harmony and the ingenious composition of harmonic phrases and fugues.
“Every toccata, nevertheless has its own character and design” says Angela Hewitta, and the D major Toccata (BWV.912) is a masterclass in toccata style, in dialogue and in expressive lyricism, wrapped up with a leaping gigue-fugue of “tremendous energy and rhythm”. But Bach has something even more magnificent planned for the final flourish.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
French Suite No. 5 in G major, BWV816
Allemande – Courante – Sarabande – Gavotte – Bourrée – Loure – Gigue
Baroque musicians were expected to be abreast of the latest international developments, and to take practical steps to enhance their knowledge. Bach himself owned copies of concertos by Vivaldi, and corresponded regularly with Francois Couperin at Versailles. So Bach’s six French Suites for keyboard, largely composed prior to 1723 while Bach was Kapellmeister in Cöthen, are both useful and enjoyable lessons for amateurs and professionals alike, and a graceful, exuberantly fresh and inventive demonstration of Bach’s wide-ranging taste and musicality. Here’s a composer who is clearly au courant with contemporary dance styles.
The Fifth Suite offers seven. The Allemande, or German dance, doubles as a stately processional prelude. The Courante – traditionally flowing – tumbles along like a stream, while the triple-time Sarabande, true to its Spanish origins, leans slowly, sensuously onto its second beat. A pair of French dances are two sides of the same coin – the bright, courtly Gavotte is followed by its rustic cousin, the Bourrée, which bustles like a country fiddler over a robust duple rhythm. And finally, another contrasted couple take the dance floor: the gracious Loure (originally from Normandy) and – considerably faster – its distant cousin the Gigue. This being Bach, this whirling, gloriously danceable finale is also a superbly-worked three-voice fugue.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV903
“As a Clavier player Bach was admired by all who had the good fortune to hear him and was the envy of the virtuosi of his day” wrote his first biographer Johann Forkel. “Those who heard him frequently could hardly detect the fact that he had modulated into a different key, so smooth were his transitions…in his extemporisation he was ever freer, more brilliant and expressive […] When he played his own music Bach contrived to introduce so much variety that every piece became a sort of conversation between its parts…”
And a decade or more after the brilliant youthful experiments of the Toccatas, Bach’s adventures with the Stylus Fantasticus found a final blossoming in the superb Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV.903), most probably begun in Cöthen in 1720 but revised a decade later in Leipzig. In its mighty two-part form Bach has refined the multi-section Toccata style down to what was, for him, its essence. The rich improvisatory invention of the Fantasia, with its almost operatic closing recitative and the monumental, Olympian ambition of the Fugue coalesce into a satisfying, imposing and thrilling whole. “For sheer virtuosity and drama” writes Angela Hewitt “the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue is hard to match”.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Partita No. 5 in G (from Clavier-Übung I) BWV829
Praeambulum – Allemande – Corrente – Sarabande – Tempo di minuetta – Passepied – Gigue
Claver-Übung (Keyboard Practice) consisting of Preludes, Allemandes, Courantes. Sarabandes, Gigues, Minuets and other Galanteries. Prepared to delight the souls of music lovers by Johann Sebastian Bach, at present capellmeister to His Highness the Prince of Saxe-Weissenfels and Director of the Choristers, Leipzig. Opus I. Published by the Author. 1731
That was how Bach advertised the first collected edition of his Six Partitas for keyboard. What strikes the modern listener as odd is the contrast between the work’s description as keyboard “practice” and Bach’s expressed aim of “delighting the souls” of music lovers. Yet this is music meant to be played (and listened to ) for pleasure. The Partita’s seven movements each take a well-established form and fill it with intellect, imagination and feeling for keyboard technique. A Praeambulum opens the work in a mood of ebullient, playful invention; there follows a courtly Allemande; a sparkling Corrente in the Italian manner; and a limpid sideways glance at the stately form of the Sarabande.
And then Bach slips off in a new direction; a minuet that might almost be a gigue followed by a passepied whose lively swing sets up the final gigue: actually a formidable double fugue disguised as a vigorous dance – a sublimely playful example of the art that conceals art.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Italian Concerto BWV971 (from Clavier-Übung II)
Allegro – Andante – Presto
In the autumn of 1705, the 20-year old Bach walked 250 miles from Arnstadt to Lübeck to hear the organ playing of Dieterich Buxtehude and, as he put it, “to comprehend one thing and another about his art”. That was an extreme demonstration of a reality of early 18th century musical life – that a master-musician was expected to extend his expertise beyond his immediate circle, and to be abreast of Europe’s many different musical styles. And so when he published the second volume of his Clavier-Übung in 1735, it contained just two works: an Overture in the French Style and a Concerto nach Italiænischen Gusto – a “concerto in the Italian taste”.
A concerto on a single unaccompanied instrument? In fact, Bach was writing for a double-manual harpsichord, an instrument upon which he was an acknowledged master. So one keyboard takes the role of the orchestra and the other of a soloist, in a brilliant concerto that doesn’t so much display Bach’s knowledge of the concertos of Marcello, Corelli and (of course) Vivaldi as proclaim it with an exuberant flourish. “A perfect model of a well-designed solo concerto” declared the critic Johann Scheibe in 1739.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV865 (from The Well-tempered Clavier, Book I)
Bach published the collection of 24 keyboard preludes and fugues that he called The Well-tempered Clavier in 1722, and the date is revealing. The collection dates from Bach’s six years of service (1717-23) at the court of Cöthen. “There I had a gracious Prince as master, who knew music as well as he loved it, and I hoped to remain in his service until the end of my life” he commented, years later.
The Prince was a thoroughly up-to-date music lover, and this may have been part of Bach’s motivation in writing a collection of pieces designed to test (and exploit) the latest advance in keyboard technology – the practice of tuning to “equal temperament” (or as we’d understand it today, consistently in tune across the full range of the keyboard). With these 24 preludes and fugues, one in every major and minor key, an amateur or an expert could range through the entire scope of their instrument, discovering, in the process whether it truly was “well tempered”. The concept worked so well that around 1742 Bach completed a second volume – pouring a lifetime’s mastery of his craft into music whose craftsmanship and emotional truth continues to inspire and delight performers, composers and listeners alike.
Angela Hewitt
Angela Hewitt occupies a unique position among today’s leading pianists. With a wide-ranging repertoire and frequent appearances in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe, Americas and Asia, she is also an award-winning recording artist whose performances of Bach have established her as one of the composer’s foremost interpreters. In 2020 she received the City of Leipzig Bach Medal: a huge honour that for the first time in its 17-year history was awarded to a woman.
In March 2024, Hewitt embarked on her latest major project entitled ‘The Mozart Odyssey’, comprising the composer’s complete piano concertos. This follows Hewitt’s highly acclaimed Bach Odyssey cycle (2016–22), in which she performed the complete keyboard works of Bach across 12 recitals, also presented worldwide. The Mozart project continues in 2025/26 with a variety of engagements which extend the Odyssey’s reach to 13 countries; recent/upcoming conductor-led performances include Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Brussels Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Warsaw Philharmonic, Estonian National Symphony, Tampere Philharmonic, Fort Worth Symphony, Montreal Symphony, NAC (Ottawa), Toronto Symphony, Vancouver Symphony and Ulster orchestras, among others. Hewitt is also much in demand as a play-conductor, collaborating with Orchestra of St Luke’s NYC, Cameristi della Scala, Tapiola Sinfonietta, Bochumer Symphoniker, Royal Northern Sinfonia, London Mozart Players and Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Mozart Odyssey. She has previously led Hong Kong and Copenhagen philharmonic orchestras, Lucerne Festival Strings, Zurich, Basel, Swedish and Stuttgart Chamber orchestras, Salzburg Camerata, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan, and Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna’s Musikverein.
Recent recital tours have included Australia and Japan, including performances in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Tokyo and Kyoto.
Hewitt’s award-winning cycle for Hyperion Records of all the major keyboard works of Bach has been described as “one of the record glories of our age” (The Sunday Times). Her discography also includes albums of Couperin, Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Fauré, Debussy, Chabrier, Ravel, Messiaen and Granados. Her most recent recordings include three volumes of Mozart’s complete piano sonatas, released in November 2022 and October 2023, with the final set released in June 2025. In 2023, Hewitt’s complete catalogue became available on all major streaming platforms following Universal Music Group’s acquisition of Hyperion; including her critically acclaimed Diapason d’Or recording of the Goldberg Variations, which was also the first of her recordings to be issued on vinyl in September 2024. A regular in the USA Billboard chart, her album Love Songs hit the top of the specialist classical chart in the UK and stayed there for months after its release. In 2015 she was inducted into Gramophone Magazine’s Hall of Fame thanks to her popularity with music lovers around the world.
Born into a musical family, Hewitt began her piano studies aged three, performing in public at four and a year later winning her first scholarship. She studied with Jean-Paul Sévilla at the University of Ottawa and, in 1985, won the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition, which launched her career. In 2018 Angela received the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2015 she received the highest honour from her native country – becoming a Companion of the Order of Canada (which is given to only 165 living Canadians at any one time). In 2006 she was awarded an OBE from Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, has seven honorary doctorates, and is a Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse College in Cambridge. In 2020 Angela was awarded the Wigmore Medal in recognition of her services to music and relationship with the hall over 35 years.
Angela lives in London but also has homes in Ottawa and Umbria, Italy where, 21 years ago, she founded the Trasimeno Music Festival – a week-long annual event which draws an audience from all over the world. To mark its 20th anniversary in 2025, Hewitt curated a special celebratory concert at Wigmore Hall, performing with and showcasing musicians that have appeared at the Festival.
