For years prior to the resurgence of interest in performing keyboard
music from the Baroque era on harpsichord, the piano was the medium of
choice and it has remained so for a number of distinguished Bach
advocates through the years, including Eunice Norton, Rosalyn Tureck,
Glenn Gould, and most recently Canadian-born Angela Hewitt. Ms. Hewitt
has almost completed her traversal of the major Bach works for solo
keyboard for England's Hyperion label, distributed in the United States
by Harmonia Mundi U.S.A. Ms. Hewitt's Hyperion discography appears at
the end of this article.
Critical acclaim for Angela Hewitt's Bach has been universal.
Concerning her recording of the Goldberg Variations, The Guardian
noted, "This is Bach…of the highest quality imaginable." A critic for
The Sunday Times observed that, "Hewitt's playing makes Bach's music
live…in a way that even the greatest harpsichordists do not," and Ms.
Hewitt's recording of Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier prompted
BBC Music Magazine to note, "…Hewitt's version…eclipses all others;
hers will become the benchmark recording…" There is a freshness and
vitality to Ms. Hewitt's Bach recordings that convey an improvisatory
character at appropriate points, but she never engages in either
flights of fancy or eccentricities that seem to crop up with performers
consumed with the pursuit of ur-Bach.
The response to Angela Hewitt's Bach cycle has been as impressive as
her press notices. Michael Spring, Hyperion's sales and marketing
manager, told me that Ms. Hewitt's recordings have all sold
exceptionally well and for the last two years the label's best selling
disc has been a Hewitt recording. "It's probably true to say," he
added, "that she is currently our best selling artist."
The English Suites (Hyperion CDA 67451/2), the penultimate release in
Ms. Hewitt's cycle, made it to the shelves of the world's retailers and
e-tailers last fall. I spoke with Angela Hewitt not long after the
release of the English Suites and during a pause between concerts on a
busy North American tour that included stops in Santa Fe, Nashville,
and her native Ottawa.
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MC: "Describe when and how you were drawn to Bach, i.e., was it a
result of singing in your father's choir in Canada, hearing him perform
Bach on the organ, etc?"
AH: "I heard a lot of Bach even before I was born. My mother was always
turning my father's pages at church, but I heard it in my earliest
years. Some of my greatest memories are of my father playing the great
organ works, the Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor, the Toccata and Fugue in
D Minor. My mother was my first teacher; she started me off when I was
four and on my first recital when I was nine, I included a whole group
of inventions.
"So from the beginning I learned the importance of phrasing,
articulation, all of the beautiful things you can learn from Bach, so I
grew up for sure in the right household for learning Bach. Singing in
my father's choir was also a great experience for learning about
polyphony and what part-writing is all about."
MC: "Was the playing of either Rosalyn Tureck or your countryman Glenn
Gould an influence on your approach to the works of Bach?"
AH: "We had-and I still have in my collection-their records, but there
was never any point at which I imitated Gould. He was an extraordinary
Bach interpreter but I don't think he should be imitated; his playing
went with his personality and I'm totally, totally different from him
as a person. Granted, Glenn Gould was a genius but I could never play
that way.
"My early teachers at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto were bigger
influences in my Bach playing, but I always listened to what was
available. Of course I listen to other pianists; I attend concerts when
I can but I also go to the source. I enjoy looking at the score."
MC: "How do you feel your Bach interpretations differ from the readings
of other performers who play or have played his music on the modern
piano?"
AH: "If you hear three bars of Bach without knowing who's
playing-Gould, Schiff, Tureck-and you are familiar with Bach
interpretation, you would not mistake any of us; it would not be
difficult in a reasonable amount of time to guess which interpreter it
was. It probably stems from the fact that with Bach, so little is
written in the score and one has to develop one's own style and we all
do it in different ways.
"What characterizes my style the most is probably the fact that I
attach so much importance to the dance rhythms and bring them out,
probably because I was also trained as a dancer from the age of three
and I feel that instinctively. I use a lot of legato-singing touch,
certainly more than Gould, for sure-which I think is important.
"Bach talked about it in the preface to his Inventions, the importance
of developing a cantabile sound in playing. That may be why Bach
preferred the clavichord to the harpsichord since you can employ a bit
of vibrato on the clavichord and thus have it sing more. Of course,
like all Bach players, I pay specific attention to the voicing, the
harmony and where it's all going…something that makes a real Bach
player stand apart from those who aren't."
MC: "Purists have been and continue to be disturbed by the use of a
modern Bösendorfer, Baldwin, or Steinway in this repertoire, but is the
medium that important or-placing the choice of instrument aside-is it
the ability of the performer to seek and find the true nature of the
music that should be set to the forefront?"
AH: "Given the fact that the harpsichord has a monochrome sound, Bach
must have felt a bit limited in a way, although his part-writing is so
wonderful that a good harpsichordist can bring it out, but to me it
would be unthinkable to say he wouldn't have liked the modern piano…I
think he would have loved it, especially a really good modern piano
where you can get a different color for all of these voices."
"The instrument should be foremost, especially when it comes to the
harpsichord; the organ is different. Bach was an expert on organs,
writing reports on a number of instruments, so with the organ music, I
think the kind of instrument one uses there does make a difference. But
with the piano, no. A lot of his music he recycled, for instance, the
keyboard concertos: most of them started life as violin concertos and
some ended up in the cantatas, so it was the music that was most
important, not the medium."
MC: "Late in his life, Bach visited the court of Frederick the Great
and, at the monarch's invitation, played a Silbermann fortepiano.
Contemporary accounts indicate that Bach was less than pleased with the
instrument. Do you feel this was due to the particular instrument, its
stage of development when Bach played it, or was Bach simply set in his
ways and not amenable to the changing times?"
AH: "I think it was the stage of development. He complained about it
being weak in the high register and hard to play, but I'm sure that if
Bach had been able to play a fortepiano with more strength there (in
the upper register) and better action like a modern Hamburg Steinway, I
think he would have been happier, yes, and had he lived longer, I think
he would have taken an active interest in the development of the
fortepiano.
"Bach had such an open mind that I think he would have welcomed any new
developments. He would have appreciated any keyboard instrument on
which a performer can taper a phrase. It's such a basic musical
component; we do it when we speak, so I can't accept that Bach would've
rejected a keyboard instrument on which that was possible."
MC: "Describe the advantages and disadvantages of performing Bach on
the modern concert grand and why you favor the instrument as opposed to
the harpsichord and/or clavichord."
AH: "For me, there are no disadvantages; there has never been a time
when I wished that I was playing another keyboard instrument.
Occasionally I find myself thinking of an organ and will add the extra
octaves in the bass, or wish that I could produce a vibrato, but I
think it's important to play Bach in a style that suits it, not to use
a lot of pedal. Bach's music must have extreme clarity in the voices,
so it's a separate study by itself and one that should be started at
the very beginning of piano playing. No, I see no disadvantage to
playing Bach on the modern piano."
MC: "Many performers have favorites among their discographies. Which
release in your Hyperion Bach cycle gives you the most pleasure and
why?"
AH: "I suppose, not counting the transcriptions, which is a bit of a
favorite-I dedicated it to my father because I heard him play so many
of those pieces when I was a child-the Goldberg Variations has to be a
special one because of what happened during the sessions.
"We had five days to record it. This was great, since-when you observe
all of the repeats-it lasts an hour and twenty minutes. By the end of
the fourth day we had covered it all, so my producer and I, we went to
dinner and when we came back to the hall around 9.30 pm, he said, 'I
think you should play the opening aria again; I think you can do it
better,' so I played the aria and he encouraged me to continue. By then
it was 11.15 pm, but we continued until a quarter of one in the morning
and I only stopped to make sure there was enough tape on hand.
"When it was over, it turned out to be the best performance of the
Goldberg Variations I had given in the twenty-five years I have been
performing it. About eighty percent of the disc comes from that late
night session. That was a special experience."
MC: "For a moment let me address your latest release, the English
Suites; the appellation is not Bach's, and some say they're about as
English as the French Suites are French, i.e., hardly-if at all. Where
did the titles come from? Are they predicated upon the sequence of
dances, the type of dances, both of the above, or none of the above?"
AH: "The title comes from the fact that there's a copy in existence
that contains the French equivalent of 'Written for the English.' We
think Bach dedicated them to an English nobleman, but we don't know and
probably never will know who it was. Stylistically, there's nothing
English about them; the title stuck because of the inscription on one
of the copies.
"Actually, they're very, very French in style, more so than the French
suites, I'd say. In the French Suites the courantes are of the slower
French type and the sarabandes are ornamented in the French style. The
first English Suite is almost totally French; it could easily be from
Couperin. In fact the first few bars were copied from a harpsichord
suite by Charles Dieupart, so the title is based entirely on the
supposed dedication.
"These pieces were probably not written for pedagogical purposes, like
most of Bach's other works. The English Suites were his first suites,
predating the partitas and French Suites and they are very
difficult-especially the gigues-but then there are the wonderfully
expressive sarabandes. The English Suites take a bit more getting used
to than the partitas or French Suites, but when you do get into them,
there's a lot of depth in them and a lot of wonderful, wonderful
moments.
"I'm glad that I waited until the end of my cycle to record them
because I learned so much recording the other works and I applied that
knowledge to the English Suites."
MC: "What is left to be recorded or released? I understand there is a
'catch-all' disc in the works that will include various and sundry
incidental pieces. How did you determine which ones to include in this
Anhang?"
AH: "I went through everything and decided what I felt was worth
recording. There'll be the Aria variata of course; two more fantasias
and fugues, the Sonata in D Major after Johann Adam Reincken with the
cuckoo fugue, and a few other bits and pieces…everything that I feel is
interesting will be included.
"In 2005, I'll be recording all of the keyboard concertos-including the
fifth Brandenburg and the Triple Concerto with the Australian Chamber
Orchestra. That will conclude the Bach cycle."
MC: "With the Bach cycle all but complete, what projects-in addition to
the Couperin now in progress-are on the drawing board and when can we
expect to hear the results?"
AH: "I'm doing three discs of Couperin; the first is out with the next
scheduled for release in March.
"Also in the pipeline are the complete Nocturnes and Impromptus of
Chopin; I'm looking forward to this. I want to get out of the Baroque
box; as much as I love Baroque music, I don't want to play just trills
for the rest of my life. We record the Chopin in November on a new
Fazioli concert grand that I just purchased. This will be the first
recording I will make on my own piano."
MC: "Let's place Angela Hewitt the musician par excellence on the back burner for the moment and take a different tack.
"I think the readers of Fanfare would be interested in knowing about
Angela Hewitt the person as well. For example, how do you successfully
balance a busy, multi-continental career with the everyday pressures
associated with family life?
AH: "I don't have a family of my own, but my mother still lives here in
Ottawa. I have wonderful, wonderful friends all around the world and I
spend a great deal of time keeping in touch with them. They're my
support network and they really keep me going. But as for having kids
or whatever, no, I'd have to put them in storage. I never could have
done the Bach project and had a family. I have no regrets; I know that
was what I was meant to do, I've done it and I'm thrilled about it.
"I've just built a house in Italy; I only brought the land in Umbria
last year. Now I have a wonderful house; I moved into it this summer
and that will be my getaway from my hundred concerts a year.
"During the last twelve months, I've been choosing everything from door
handles to tiles, to kitchen sinks…it's been great fun, and I'm looking
forward to going there, relaxing, practicing, and being with friends. I
can also be alone there and have some space. I'd also like to start a
festival in Umbria someday, so that's something I sort of look forward
to as well.
"In London, I love going to the theater if I have time, or to other
concerts. The theater is wonderful as anyone who has visited London
knows. But there isn't a lot of free time. If it were only the
practicing and concerts, that would be fine, actually, but the
traveling takes an awful lot of time, the packing, answering e-mails-I
get thirty e-mails a day from agents, journalists, and they all have to
be answered. Then there are programs. People want to know what I'm
playing in 2006…this takes an unbelievable amount of time and I do it
all myself, but this is the choice that I made, and I'm very happy with
it!"
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"Composed for music-lovers, to refresh their spirits." These words
often appeared in the dedications of Bach's compositions. With her Bach
cycle, Angela Hewitt surely refreshes the spirits of music lovers and
continues to bring distinction and honor to Hyperion via her ongoing
series of exceptional recordings.
Angela Hewitt on Hyperion
- Bach: Arrangements (CDA 67309)
- Bach: Goldberg Variations (CDA 67305)
- Bach: Italian Concerto; French Overture et al (CDA
- Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 (CDA 67301/2)
- Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2 (CDA 67304/5
- Bach: The Six English Suites (CDA 67451/2)
- Bach: The Six French Suites et al (CDA 67121/2)
- Bach: The Two- and Three-Part Inventions (CDA 66746)
- Bach: The Six Partitas (CDA 67191/2)
- Bach: The Seven Toccatas (CDA 67310)
- Couperin: Keyboard Music 1 (CDA 67440)
- Messaien: Piano Music (CDA 67054)
- Ravel: Complete Solo Piano Music (CDA 67341/2)
