Angela Hewitt, piano, October 11, 2017

Robert Blocker, Dean

horowitz piano series

Angela Hewitt

Boris Berman, Artistic Director Wednesday, October 11, 2017 • 7:30 pm Morse Recital Hall

yale school of music

Angela Hewitt October 11, 2017 • Morse Recital Hall

Johann Sebastian Bach 1685–1750

“Goldberg” Variations, BWV 988

Theme. Aria I. a 1 clavier II. a 1 clavier III. Canone all’unisono a 1 clavier IV. a 1 clavier V. a 1 ovvero 2 claviere VI. Canone alla seconda a 1 clavier VII. a 1 ovvero 2 claviere VIII. a 2 claviere IX. Canone alla terza a 1 clavier X. Fughetta a 1 clavier XI. a 2 claviere XII. Canone alla quarta XIII. a 2 claviere XIV. a 2 claviere XV. Canone alla quinta XVI. Ouverture a 1 clavier XVII. a 2 claviere XVIII. Canone alla sesta a 1 clavier XIX. a 1 clavier XX. a 2 claviere XXI. Canone alla settima XXII. Alla breve a 1 clavier XXIII. a 2 claviere XXIV. Canone all’ottava a 1 clavier XXV. a 2 claviere XXVI. a 2 claviere XXVII. Canone alla nona XXVIII. a 2 claviere XXIX. a 1 ovvero 2 claviere XXX. Quodlibet a 1 clavier

Theme. Aria da capo

Ms. Hewitt will greet the audience and sign programs after the concert.

As a courtesy to the performers and audience, silence electronic devices.

Please do not leave the hall during selections. Photography or recording of any kind is prohibited.

artist profile

Angela Hewitt, piano One of the world’s leading pianists, Angela Hewitt appears in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Her interpretations of Bach have established her as one of the composer’s foremost interpreters of our time.

Angela’s award-winning cycle for Hyperion Records of all the major keyboard works of Bach has been described as “one of the record glories of our age” (The Sunday Times). Her much-awaited recording of Bach’s “Art of Fugue” appeared in 2014, and immediately hit the charts in the UK and the United States. Her discography also includes albums of music by Couperin, Rameau, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Fauré, Debussy, Chabrier, Ravel, and Granados. With conductor Hannu Lintu she has recorded two albums of Mozart Piano Concertos (the most recent one with the National Arts Centre Orchestra won a Juno Award in Canada), the Schumann Piano Concerto with the DSO Berlin, and Messiaen’s “Turangalila” Symphony with the Finnish Radio Symphony. New releases include her second disc of Scarlatti Sonatas and her sixth volume of Beethoven Sonatas (including “Les Adieux”). Last year, Angela was inducted into Gramophone Magazine’s “Hall of Fame” thanks to her popularity with music lovers around the world. Her second recording of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations was released in 2016.

At the invitation of London’s Wigmore Hall, Angela will perform the complete keyboard works of Bach in a series of 12 recitals over four years. “The Bach Odyssey,” which began in 2016, is also being presented in New York (92nd Street Y), Tokyo, and

Ottawa. Recitals in the 2016-17 season have taken Angela to such diverse places as Talinn, Tivoli (Copenhagen), Vienna (her solo debut), Madrid, Bilbao, Aldeburgh (Snape Maltings), Rotterdam, Bath, Florence, Singapore, and all over Australia (Musica Viva tour in May 2017). Concerto appearances include the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa (with Alexander Shelley), the Baltimore Symphony (with Hannu Lintu), the Montreal Symphony (with Christoph Gedschold), a tour of the UK with the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra, and with the Lucerne Festival Strings in Munich (conducting from the keyboard).

She also continues to perform with authors and actors, most recently with Ian McEwan (in Vienna and New York), Julian Barnes (in Vienna’s Konzerthaus in April 2017) and Roger Allam (at Shakespeare’s Globe in London).

Born into a musical family, Angela began her piano studies at age three, performing in public at four, and a year later winning her first scholarship. She then went on to learn with French pianist Jean-Paul Sévilla. In 1985, she won the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition.

In July 2005, Angela launched the Trasimeno Music Festival in the heart of Umbria near Perugia. An annual event, it draws an international audience to the Castle of the Knights of Malta in Magione, on the shores of Lake Trasimeno. Seven concerts in seven days feature Hewitt as a recitalist, chamber musician, song accompanist, and conductor, working with both established and young artists of her choosing.

Angela Hewitt is an Ambassador for “Orkidstra”– a Sistema-inspired, social

artist profile · Notes on the program

development program in Ottawa’s inner city which, through the joy of learning and playing music together, teaches children life-skills such as commitment, teamwork, and tolerance. She is also in great demand for master classes around the world, generously sharing her knowledge and experience with young pianists.

Named “Artist of the Year” at the 2006 Gramophone Awards, she was awarded an Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006. In 2015, Angela was promoted to a Companion of the Order of Canada. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, has seven honorary doctorates, and is a Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse College in Cambridge. johann sebastian bach “Goldberg” Variations, BWV 988 J.S. Bach gave the four volumes of his ClavierÜbung (“Keyboard Practice”) collection the distinctive subtitle “Music to Delight the Spirit,” indicating an artful cultivation of many compositional frontiers for any musician to enjoy and explore. Bach published the fourth volume of the ClavierÜbung in 1741, calling it “an Aria with diverse variations for the harpsichord with two manuals.” Later known as the “Goldberg” Variations, the final volume expands upon the stylistic scope and flair of earlier works from the collection, such as the French Overture and the Italian Concerto, which also utilize the contrasting sounds of the two-manual harpsichord’s keyboards.

The work received its unique title from a charming but apocryphal story from J.N. Forkel’s biography of Bach published in 1802. Legend has it that Bach wrote this

set of variations for Count Hermann Carl von Keyserlingk, the Russian Ambassador at the Dresden court. Keyserlingk suffered from insomnia and would have his personal harpsichordist, the young virtuoso Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, play Bach’s variation set to lull him to sleep. In addition to the fact that Goldberg was only 14 years old at the time of publication, the lack of a fawning dedication to the Count makes it improbable that Bach intended the work for Keyserlingk.

Further, some of Bach’s more sprightly variations are likely to prolong insomnia rather than soothe it.

Given the piece’s technical demands, the connection to a keyboard virtuoso like Goldberg is not far-fetched. Bach aims beyond mere technical proficiency. In his preface to an earlier collection of 30 instructive keyboard pieces called the Inventions and Sinfonias, Bach wishes for the player “to obtain good inventions [ideas] but to also develop them well; and, above all to achieve a cantabile [singing] style in playing while acquiring a strong foretaste of composition.” Bach takes this aspirational pedagogical philosophy to new heights in the “Goldberg” Variations, interweaving “diverse” compositional genres and styles, thereby showing the player how thoroughly one can develop a musical idea. The variations are a masterful culmination of Bach’s legacy as a composer, teacher, and keyboard virtuoso.

The piece begins and ends with an exquisitely-decorated, lyrical aria that is left alone during a journey through 30 variations that explore nearly every musical style, genre, and mood. Nearly infinite possibilities are available to the composer in variation form, where a musical idea is repeatedly altered in some way. As the

Notes on the Program

foundation for the work, Bach chose a thirty-two-measure ground (recurring) bass pattern—a similar procedure to that of the eponymous “Pachelbel’s Canon.”

Each movement is split in half, with each half repeated.

The variations are grouped in sets of three distinct types, with an indication to be played on one or two keyboards. The first of the three is a piece of a specific sort, like a small fugue or dance; the second, a freer, flowing movement that features the clever intertwining and crossing of the hands; and the third, an ingenious canon (a strict musical “rule”), where a musical idea is first introduced and then enters later at a different pitch level, with the parts following one another. The canon rises by one notch after each successive group of three, beginning from the unison and on to the second, third, etc., until the ninth, introducing a new compositional challenge each time that Bach meets with gusto.

At the outset, Variation 1 features a spirited leaping bass, reminiscent of a cello, that accompanies a jovial linear melody. The boisterous rhythm of the lines does not quite line up, with syncopations suggesting playful banter. The cheeriness is not to be written off, however, as nimble arpeggios and hand-crossings interrupt the texture.

In Variation 16, Bach exhibits his stylistic finesse with a characteristic French overture: its sweeping flourishes and pompous, jagged rhythms recharge the intensity for the second half of the work.

Perhaps the most striking is Variation 25, a profound lament rivaling the Aria in expression, and one of three variations in the minor mode. On the two-manual harpsichord, the lyrical upper melody is played on the

louder keyboard while the accompaniment is played on the softer one. The chromatic lines are full of color and longing, with rhapsodic vocal decorations in the melody.

Languid, sighing rhythms contrast with fluid ornaments to heighten the emotional intensity. Variation 28, back in the sweet major mode, requires both delicacy and virtuosity at the same time. The inventive, playful texture pits fluttering, flute-like ornaments in the right hand against agile leaps in the left hand, as well as cheeky hand-crossings.

The final variation, placed where the last canon should be, is a jolly medley (quodlibet) of folk songs that are woven together, including “I Have So Long Been Away From You,” aptly positioned before the original Aria returns. Whereas in previous variations the bass pattern is obscured and transformed in the texture, the ground bass in Variation 30 is presented distinctly in preparation for the final Aria. A profound homecoming then takes place, the journey coming to an end the same way it began.

The piece offers manifold interpretive challenges to the performer, depending on the instrument. Bach did not write any music for the piano, a newer instrument that was not yet fully refined. With the harpsichord’s plucking action, the two-manual instrument achieves dynamic contrast through differences in volume between the keyboards, whereas the piano’s action achieves dynamics based on the velocity at which the hammers strike the strings. Unlike the piano, the harpsichord has no sustain pedal, making the leaps and hand-crossings riskier. But the pianist, without the option of two keyboards that Bach envisioned, must take particular care to avoid tangling the fingers: in Variation 29, for example, chords close to

Notes on the Program

one another occur in rapid-fire succession, followed by brusque melodic figures shared between the hands.

All that being said, the rich variety and endless depth of musical possibilities in the “Goldberg” Variations continue to enthrall performers and audiences alike, regardless of the instrument, truly living up to Bach’s aspiration for “music to delight the spirit.”

—Jonathan Salamon

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Robert Blocker, Dean