Angela Somer

Canada's Angela Hewitt would be on anybody's list of the world's great pianists, but she has been known as a Bach specialist. Her cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas on Hyperion has, to an extent, been what you might expect: technically precise, individualistic, a bit idiosyncratic. What listeners may not have been prepared for is how high the highs are. Here it is absolutely essential to stick around through the whole program. Hewitt's Piano Sonata No. 17 in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2 ("Tempest"), has odd features: violent accents in the outer movements, and a curious de-emphasis of the octave ornament figure that plays such an important structural role in the slow movement.

Angela Hewitt is a highly esteemed pianist, particularly noted as a Bach performer, but accomplished in an exceptionally large repertory that embraces all eras of keyboard music. The daughter of an organist, Hewitt began to study piano at age three, making a public debut at the age of four, winning a scholarship at six, and eventually adding studies in ballet, singing, violin, and recorder.