Angela+hewitt

Angela Hewitt - Bach: Fantasia & Fugue In A Minor, Aria Variata etc.
SACD ISO: 2,86 GB (Stereo + MCH DSD) | FLAC @ 24bit/88.2kHz: 1077 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Rec. Info
Label/Cat#: Hyperion Records # SACDA67499 | Country/Year: UK 2004
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…And Hyperion's sound captures Hewitt's performances in sound as clear and warm as the rest of their wonderful recordings. A magnificent conclusion to a monumental cycle, Hewitt's final Bach disc will appeal to anyone who loves life and Bach.

Angela Hewitt - Bach: Fantasia & Fugue In A Minor, Aria Variata etc.
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 216 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Hyperion Records # SACDA67499 | Country/Year: UK 2004
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

…And Hyperion's sound captures Hewitt's performances in sound as clear and warm as the rest of their wonderful recordings. A magnificent conclusion to a monumental cycle, Hewitt's final Bach disc will appeal to anyone who loves life and Bach.

Angela Hewitt is rapidly establishing herself as one of the great pianists of our age, her concert career expanding as rapidly as her discography, so it seems only right that, following her success in tackling one of the pillars of classical music in Bach, she should tackle another in Beethoven. This volume commences a survey of Beethoven sonatas which will couple the well known, in this case the ‘Appassionata’, with the comparatively neglected, here the grandest of Beethoven’s early sonatas, his Op 7. The disc is completed with a superb performance of Op 10/3, one of the early sonatas where Beethoven can be seen breaking the bounds of convention to create the style which would define the great works of his middle period.

Rameau on the piano? It's not altogether unheard of – there were a handful of classic recordings made by Robert Casadesus back in 1952 – but, despite many recordings of Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti on the piano in the digital age, there's been precious little Rameau on the piano until this Angela Hewitt recording of three complete suites from 2006. By choosing the Suite in E minor from the Pièces de clavecin of 1731 plus the Suites in G minor and A minor from Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin, Hewitt has for the most part stayed away from the more evocatively titled works and stuck to the standard stylized Baroque dance forms of the allemande, courante, and gigue. Justly celebrated for her cool and clean Bach recordings, this strategy works well for Hewitt. Without seeming to resort to the sustain or the mute pedal, she floats Rameau's lines and melodies, and without seeming to exaggerate the accents or dynamics, she gives Rameau's rhythms a wonderful sense of lift. In the deliberately evocative movements from the G minor Suite – "La poule," "Les sauvages," and especially "L'egiptienne" – Hewitt seems to bring less to the music – her interpretations are remarkably straight – and to get less out of it – her performances are remarkably bland.

This delightful disc offers a selection from the wealth of piano transcriptions of Bach's music. The Bach revival that gathered momentum during the nineteenth century created a climate for many composer-pianists to interpret his works through their own piano transcriptions, whether of chorale preludes, organ works or other instrumental music. Much of Bach's music was made domestically available via such arrangements (and the tradition continued well into the twentieth century, even after Bach originals were well known). Indeed, the practice of such transcriptions was widely used by Bach himself, who freely adapted his own and others' music for different instrumental settings.

Even though Angela Hewitt's repertoire is quite extensive and diverse, encompassing the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and modern eras, her true specialty is the music of J.S. Bach, which she has recorded almost exclusively for Hyperion since the 1980s. With this recording of The Art of Fugue, Hewitt completes her long-running series of piano renditions of the solo keyboard works, and while not everyone is convinced that Bach composed this study of fugal techniques for the keyboard, Hewitt's performance is credible and satisfying. She controls the often unwieldy counterpoint by regarding the lines as if they were vocal parts, and her phrases are shaped by natural breathing points, as well as the different emotional qualities she brings to each fugue and canon. The Art of Fugue can be daunting for both performer and listener because its persistent tonality of D minor and monothematic material can be quite tedious in the wrong hands.