Angela Hewitt - Angela Hewitt: Beethoven Piano Variations (2024)

Pianist Angela Hewitt is an internationally prominent pianist, particularly noted for her Bach readings but accomplished in a large repertory encompassing many eras of keyboard music. A longtime fixture of the Hyperion label catalog, she has been a prolific recording artist since the mid-'80s.

Hewitt was born in Ottawa on July 26, 1958. Her father, Godfrey Hewitt, was a British organist and choir director, and she also holds British citizenship. Angela took up the piano at age three, with her mother as her teacher. She appeared in public at four and won a scholarship the following year, continuing piano lessons and also studying violin, recorder, and ballet dancing. In 1964, Hewitt entered Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music, and when she was nine, she gave a recital there. Hewitt did her undergraduate work at the University of Ottawa, studying with Jean-Paul Sevilla and graduating at 18. Wins at several competitions, including the 1985 International Bach Competition in Toronto, helped her gain wider recognition. That Bach Competition honor paved the way for an album issued by the Deutsche Grammophon label on which she played keyboard works of Bach; she has remained associated with Bach's music over her entire career. Hewitt's debut on Hyperion came in 1994 with another collection of Bach keyboard music featuring the Two- and Three-Part Inventions, and with few exceptions, she has remained on that label ever since.

After living in Paris from 1978 to 1985, Hewitt settled in London. She has maintained strong connections to Canada, however. Hewitt has appeared in many major world concert venues, including New York's Alice Tully Hall, Wigmore Hall in London, and Chicago's Ravinia Festival. Her concerto credits include appearances with the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the BBC Philharmonic, as well as every major Canadian orchestra and many in the U.S. Although she continued to perform and record Bach frequently, Hewitt has a large repertory stretching forward into the 21st century. She has devoted albums to composers as varied as Beethoven, Fauré, and Albert Roussel, and she has commissioned new works from such composers as Dominic Muldowney and Matthew Whittall. In the 2010s, Hewitt turned increasingly often to Beethoven's piano sonatas, and by 2022, when she issued an album featuring Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 29 in B flat major, Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier"), and Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111, her catalog comprised more than 60 items. Later that year, Hewitt issued an album of Mozart's first seven piano sonatas on Hyperion. ~ James Manheim