MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

Availablity Buywell.com

Johann Sebastian BACH (1685-1750)
Italian Concerto in F major BWV971 (1735) [12:56]
Toccata in C minor BWV 911 (1710s)[11:39]
Four Duets BWV 802-805 [11:00]
English Suite No.6 in D minor BWV 811 (c.1722) [26:03]
Angela Hewitt (piano)
rec. Le Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, October 1985
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON ELOQUENCE 442 9446 [62:01]
Experience Classicsonline




Angela Hewitt’s extensive Bach series on Hyperion is the one by which her playing of the composer is best known. But she recorded Bach for DG in Switzerland in October 1985 and this disc restores her playing of the Italian Concerto, The Sixth English Suite, the Four Duets and the Toccata in C minor in performances that are justly weighted, technically controlled and eloquent.

The Italian Concerto is not especially fast. Tatiana Nikolayeva is faster still but the differences in weight and articulation are what sets the two players apart – the Russian inclining to a full, sonorous and rounded tone, the Canadian preferring a lighter, more precise and brighter sonority. It enables Hewitt’s passagework to register finely. Her slow movement is duly serious but not overwrought and her finale is vibrant yet clear, lightly pedalled and crisply accomplished. The Toccata shows her laying bare its structure without becoming at all didactic. She pursues things with questing intelligence, with clarity and with imaginative resources. Rhythmic control is strong, the contrapuntal writing effortlessly explored.

The Four Duets are similarly examples of Hewitt’s admirable way. Perhaps her finest playing comes in the A minor where she measures tonal weight and rubati exactly. She is above all a Bach player who at all times sounds natural and unforced. Her tempi sound acutely judged and she maintains lines with tremendous concentration and sensitivity. And so too in the D minor English Suite where she finds buoyancy and fantasy in alluring measure. She is not a Bach player rooted in, say, Nikolayeva’s cultural soil. Hewitt’s Bach is altogether cleaner, crisper, and lighter; one cannot for a moment imagine her, for example, taking the Busoni Chorale Prelude arrangements at Nikolayeva’s monumental tempos. Hewitt’s Bach is not monumental in that sense but its architectural monumentality is assuredly inherent in her playing, as anyone who has heard her Goldberg Variations – in concert, preferably – will attest.

If you have the Hyperion recordings, though, do you need these? CDA 67306 has the Italian Concerto and the Duets BWV805-805 so that most approximates to this disc. The English Suites are on two discs – CDEA 67451/2. Elegantly presented and comprehensive in the context of an extensive series these 1990s recordings are the finest examples of Hewitt’s Bach playing. But there is really very little to choose between them and this earlier DG release on a point-by-point basis. This DG has strong claims of its own.

Jonathan Woolf


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.