Angela Hewitt – Debussy: Suite bergamasque; Children’s Corner; 2 Arabesques & Other Solo Piano Music (2012/2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Angela Hewitt – Debussy: Suite bergamasque; Children’s Corner; 2 Arabesques & Other Solo Piano Music (2012/2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:19:34 minutes | 600 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion

“This is one of the better offerings for Debussy’s 150th anniversary … it should come as no surprise that Hewitt is a remarkably fine Debussy pianist. This generously filled disc finds Hewitt utterly persuasive in the three suites at its heart … Hyperion captures the sound marvellously … special mention should be made of Clair de lune: it is quite an achievement for its lyrical beauty to be heard afresh.”

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Angela Hewitt – Chopin: Complete Nocturnes & Impromptus (2004/2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Angela Hewitt – Chopin: Complete Nocturnes & Impromptus (2004/2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:12:53 minutes | 2,02 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion

“In a catalogue boasting many distinguished Chopin Nocturne cycles, Angela Hewitt’s commands attention.”
– BBC Music Magazine

Angela Hewitt takes a well-deserved break from her mammoth Bach and Couperin surveys to present us with this enthralling set of Chopin’s most distinguished piano pieces—the complete Nocturnes and Impromptus.

Between 1830 and 1846 Chopin wrote eighteen Nocturnes that were published more or less in the order in which they were written. By spanning almost his entire creative life, they give us a marvellous opportunity to see not only how his early works were already totally inspired and original, but also how his style and emotional maturity developed through the years.

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Angela Hewitt – Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2, BWV 846-893 (2009/2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Angela Hewitt – Bach: The Well-Tempered Clavier Books 1 & 2, BWV 846-893 (2009/2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 04:31:07 minutes | 1,97 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion

“Listening to Angela Hewitt’s latest thoughts on Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier alongside her late-1990s Hyperion cycle, it appears that her interpretations haven’t changed so much as evolved, intensfied and, most important, internalised … while both versions hold equal validity and stature, Hewitt’s remake ultimately digs deeper, with more personalised poetry.”

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Angela Hewitt – Mozart: Piano Sonatas K. 310-311 & 330-333 (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Angela Hewitt – Mozart: Piano Sonatas K. 310-311 & 330-333 (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:35:53 minutes | 2,76 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Decca (UMO) (Classics)

Angela Hewitt’s voyage of discovery through Mozart’s piano sonatas is proving a joy, the works sounding newly minted in vital, alert accounts which respect their scale and sensibility while revealing influences of Mozart’s orchestral and concerto writing of the period.

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Angela Hewitt – Beethoven: Variations (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Angela Hewitt – Beethoven: Variations (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:19:43 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion

The great ‘Eroica’ variations are the centrepiece of an album which, ending with two amusingly anglophile tributes, contains some surprisingly under-appreciated Beethoven. This is an indispensable pendant to Angela Hewitt’s ongoing survey of the piano sonatas.

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Angela Hewitt, Hannu Lintu, National Arts Centre Orchestra – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos 22 & 24 (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Angela Hewitt, Hannu Lintu, National Arts Centre Orchestra – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos 22 & 24 (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:17 minutes | 1,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Hyperion is delighted to present Angela Hewitt’s third volume of Mozart piano concertos. Writing in The Observer, Stephen Pritchard wrote of the first volume that ‘Judging from this first example, it’s going to be a journey as revelatory as her exploration of all the major keyboard works of Bach’.
Here Angela Hewitt is joined by her compatriot National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada and frequent collaborator Hannu Lintu for sparklingly stylish renditions of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos 22 and 24.
Both of these works were written between December 1785 and March 1786. For the first time in a piano concerto orchestration, in No 22 he uses clarinets—an instrument that became a regular member of orchestras only in the 1780s. No 24 is a dark and passionate work, made more striking by its classical restraint, and the final movement, a set of variations, is commonly called ‘sublime’.

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Angela Hewitt – Liszt: Piano Sonata (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Angela Hewitt – Liszt: Piano Sonata (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:14:35 minutes | 579 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Angela Hewitt’s notes for this important new album describe a teenager’s moment of revelation when she first came to appreciate the epic masterpiece that is the Liszt Piano Sonata. Here we have a heart-felt recording where this palpable sense of wonder is manifest alongside Hewitt’s enthralling technical facility at the keyboard.
The programme is completed by the second half of Liszt’s dazzling second Année de pèlerinage collection: the three Petrarch Sonnets and the noble Dante Sonata, the latter composed as a fund-raiser for the Bonn Beethoven monument in 1839.

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Angela Hewitt – Bach: Fantasia & Fugue In A Minor, Aria Variata etc. (2004) MCH SACD ISO + Hi-Res FLAC

Angela Hewitt – Bach: Fantasia & Fugue In A Minor, Aria Variata etc. (2004)
SACD ISO: 2,86 GB (Stereo + MCH DSD) | FLAC @ 24bit/88.2kHz: 1077 MB | Full Artwork | 3% Rec. Info
Label/Cat#: Hyperion Records # SACDA67499 | Country/Year: UK 2004
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque

Review by James Leonard

At the best of times under the best of circumstances, Glenn Gould was compelling, but the rest of the time, he was just nuts. Nope, when it comes to the question of who the greatest Canadian Bach pianist is, the answer is Angela Hewitt, just like when it comes to the question of who the great living Bach pianist is, the answer is Angela Hewitt. In her series of recordings of the keyboard works of Bach for Hyperion, Hewitt’s brilliant virtuosity, lively intelligence, and deep musicianship have defined what it means to play Bach on the piano at the turn of the second millennium. Even in this the last volume of the series containing some of his least-known works, Hewitt is not playing “the last and the least” but, as she remarks in his notes, the best of the rest. While not the best known of Bach’s works, they are, at least in Hewitt’s hands, supreme works of musical craft and sublime works of spiritual beauty. From the pair of Fantasias and Fugues in A minor that open and close the program through the dolorous Variations alla Maniera Italiana to the exquisite pair of chorale preludes, Hewitt has assembled her program with taste and sensitivity. Hewitt’s performances here are as fine as those of the rest of her series, as serious, as witty, as virtuosic, as lucid, and as lovely as the rest of her Bach recordings. And Hyperion’s sound captures Hewitt’s performances in sound as clear and warm as the rest of their wonderful recordings.

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Angela Hewitt – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp 106 & 111 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Angela Hewitt - Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp 106 & 111 (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Angela Hewitt – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp 106 & 111 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:18:18 minutes | 1,38 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Both the sonatas recorded here are recent additions to Angela Hewitt’s repertoire, and the results amply justify the patience and wisdom of her approach. A fitting end to a magnificent Beethoven sonata cycle.
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Angela Hewitt – J.S. Bach: The Art of Fugue (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Angela Hewitt - J.S. Bach: The Art of Fugue (2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Angela Hewitt – J.S. Bach: The Art of Fugue (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:29:40 minutes | 695 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Over the years that Angela Hewitt has recorded Bach for Hyperion records, it has gradually become clear that there has been an elephant in the room. Its unspoken name was The Art of Fugue, the monument of counterpoint left unfinished at Bach’s death. Hewitt wasn’t studying or playing it. Apart from being appallingly difficult, its music, she says, seemed remote, even boring.

Finally, with no other Bach monument left to scale, this most elegant British-Canadian pianist grabbed her elephant by the trunk. She scheduled a performance, in two instalments, at the Royal Festival Hall in 2012-13. She studied hard, thought hard. And with the score seamlessly unrolling on her iPad she outpoured playing of unusual distinction, even for her. Recorded last summer under studio conditions in Berlin, this album captures that interpretation on her trusty Fazioli in friendly and pellucid sound.

I won’t mince words. This Art of Fugue is marvellous. The variety and beauty of tone alone make compelling listening, bringing contrasts, clarity and warmth to Bach’s intellectual marvels. The fugal subjects pile up; they are inverted, augmented and turned inside out—permutations neatly documented in the pianist’s typically detailed booklet notes. Yet her fingers never make the results dry triumphs of engineering.

Each piece casts a specific mood, sombre, flighty or relaxed. Hewitt maintains, too, an innate sense of the pace required for letting the counterpoint’s individual voices breathe. Dotted rhythms and decorative flourishes are polished and placed with infinite care, especially noticeable in Contrapunctus 6, labelled “in stylo Francese”. Here and elsewhere, in his own recording from 2008, Pierre-Laurent Aimard—French himself—appears very tightly corseted.

Throughout, Hewitt’s interpretative decisions are almost all helpful and wise. The one exception for me is her addition of a chorale prelude following the last unfinished fugue, which performers usually leave dangling so poignantly in mid-air. I find the chorale an intrusion, but there can’t be any doubt, surely, about the expressive benefits of performing Bach’s epic on a modern concert grand—other options are possible—or the radiant majesty and humanity of her playing. The Art of Fugue is an elephant no more. –Geoff Brown, The Times
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Angela Hewitt – Faure: Piano Music (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Angela Hewitt – Faure: Piano Music (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:12:49 minutes | 574 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Challenge Classics

Angela Hewitt’s recordings of French piano music have received the highest critical acclaim, her ‘tenderness, Gallic wit, verve, and—the most important ingredient of all—charm’ proving perfect for works by Chabrier, Debussy, Ravel and indeed Rameau and Couperin. Now she turns to a composer who is more serious and introspective, with a refinement that has led to him being relatively overlooked by performers. But in Angela Hewitt’s hands this music is an utter joy.

This album includes the major work Thème et variations, Op 73—one of Faure’s greatest works for piano—and a selection of Valses-caprices and Nocturnes. It ends with a more radiant piece from Fauré’s youth, the earliest piece included on this recording—the Ballade pour piano seul, Op 19, dedicated to Saint-Saëns.

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Angela Hewitt – Mozart: Piano Sonatas K279-284 & 309 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Angela Hewitt - Mozart: Piano Sonatas K279-284 & 309 (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Angela Hewitt – Mozart: Piano Sonatas K279-284 & 309 (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:25:55 minutes | 2,66 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

“If this first volume is anything to go by, the journey will be a joy…Hewitt makes them sound effortless. Her articulation is clean, the pedalling lightly judicious, her fingers nimble and strong, the ornamentation always tasteful, while the clarity of her approach brings out the individual character of each sonata, each movement”.
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Angela Hewitt – Chopin: Nocturnes & Impromptus (2004) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Angela Hewitt – Chopin: Nocturnes & Impromptus (2004)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:12:53 minutes | 2,01 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Angela Hewitt takes a well-deserved break from her mammoth Bach and Couperin surveys to present us with this enthralling set of Chopin’s most distinguished piano pieces—the complete Nocturnes and Impromptus.

Between 1830 and 1846 Chopin wrote eighteen Nocturnes that were published more or less in the order in which they were written. By spanning almost his entire creative life, they give us a marvellous opportunity to see not only how his early works were already totally inspired and original, but also how his style and emotional maturity developed through the years.

The four Impromptus date from 1835 to 1842. The title suggests improvisation; they might very well have been conceived as such initially, but we know that Chopin went through agonies when it came to writing a musical idea down. He would often spend six weeks on a page, only to return to what he had written in the first place. You wouldn’t know it listening to these pieces. They are full of vitality and freshness, and carry us along with great fluidity.

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Angela Hewitt – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp. 22, 31/3 & 101 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Angela Hewitt - Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp. 22, 31/3 & 101 (2013) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Angela Hewitt – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp. 22, 31/3 & 101 (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:12:27 minutes | 556 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Angela Hewitt presents a fourth volume in her acclaimed series of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, which has delighted her fans worldwide.

The little-known Sonata in B flat major, Op 22, the last of Beethoven’s ‘early’ sonatas, is recorded alongside Op 31 No 3 (sometimes known as ‘La chasse’, or ‘The Hunt’, because of its tumultuous Presto con fuoco finale). The album is concluded with Op 101, of which the journalist for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in Leipzig wrote: ‘Truly, here in his 101st composition admiration and renewed respect take hold of us, when we wander along strange, never trodden paths with the great painter of the soul’, going on to enthuse about the most beautiful colours and pictures in Beethoven’s new Piano Sonata.
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Angela Hewitt – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp. 2/2, 10/1, 78 & 110 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Angela Hewitt - Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp. 2/2, 10/1, 78 & 110 (2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download

Angela Hewitt – Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Opp. 2/2, 10/1, 78 & 110 (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 01:16:06 minutes | 579 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Hyperion Records

Angela Hewitt has been much praised in her earlier recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonatas—displaying ‘exquisite taste’—and now turns her ‘uncluttered clarity of thought and inspired structural pacing’ to four more works spanning the composer’s career. As ever, Angela’s accompanying notes provide fascinating insights into both the music and her performances.
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