Musica Viva Tasmania in association with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra presents
Angela Hewitt In Recital
Saturday 13th May, 2017, 7.30pm
Federation Concert Hall, Hobart
Tickets from $54 at www.tso.com.au or 1800 001 190.
Legendary pianist performing in Hobart as part of world Bach odyssey 13 May, 2017
“There is no finer player of Bach alive today.”
The Press, York
“Exquisite and dramatic … at once finely thought-out and exalting”
The Sunday Times
Angela Hewitt is on a mission. Acclaimed as one of the world’s great pianists, the Canadian star has embarked on a global Bach Odyssey, touring the world with the composer’s complete solo keyboard works. Her Australian fans will rejoice when she returns from 8 – 27 May on a national tour for Musica Viva. A rare visitor to our shores, Hewitt’s vast recording catalogue from the last 20 years (including every keyboard work by Bach) means she has an enormous number of Australian fans who’ve been waiting to hear her live. In two brilliant, insightful programs, she pairs Bach with Beethoven, Ravel, Scarlatti and Chabrier, casting new light onto her deep, unparalleled understanding of this music.
Angela Hewitt lives in the international fast lane of the piano world. Praised in The Sunday Times as ‘one of the reliably mesmerising musicians of the day’, she rose to fame when she won the Toronto International Bach Competition in 1985.
She hasn’t stopped since. In 2015 she was inducted into Gramophone Magazine’s ‘Hall of Fame’ – a tribute she adds to an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, a Companion of the Order of Canada, seven honorary doctorates, a visiting fellowship at Cambridge and many other prestigious accolades. Her award-winning cycle of Bach keyboard works has been described as ‘one of the record glories of our age’ (The Sunday Times), and her new, second recording of the Goldberg Variations is expected to follow suit.
J.S. Bach is practically in Hewitt’s DNA. Her father was a church organist in Ottawa, so she was steeped in music as a child. “That was indispensable,” she reflects. “To play Bach well, you don’t have to be a believer – but I think you must have knowledge of polyphony and realise that for Bach, music was an expression of his faith. I was lucky that I grew up listening to Bach from the beginning.”
Dance was another key influence. “From my earliest years, music and dance were inseparable,” she reveals. “I was always prancing around my bedroom, whether it was to Bach or Ravel – it was a natural way of expressing the music. When it’s formed so young, it doesn’t leave you.”
For her Hobart program, the dancing counterpoint of Bach’s partitas makes a natural connection to the miniature delicacies of Scarlatti’s sonatas, and to the Baroque inspirations behind exquisite French works of Ravel and Chabrier. “The Bach partitas are full of dance rhythms, and the Chabrier piece I’m playing is a Bourrée fantasque, one in which you can almost hear the clogs of the Auvergne rustic dancers,” says Hewitt. The breathtakingly tricky toccata which concludes Ravel’s Sonatine requires a pianist of tremendous ability – the composer himself was too afraid to record it!
The New York Times deems her ‘one of those rare musicians who seem to get something into their heads and hearts and find it at their fingertips instantaneously’
HOBART PROGRAM
JS BACH Partita no 1 in B-flat major, BWV825
JS BACH Partita no 4 in D major, BWV828
SCARLATTI A selection of keyboard sonatas
Sonata in D major, K491
Sonata in D major, K492
Sonata in B major, K377
Sonata in E major K380
Sonata in A major, K24
RAVEL Sonatine
CHABRIER Bourrée fantasque
Samuel Cairnduff, Director of Marketing and Communications
