In the liner notes for her dazzling new recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Hyperion), Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt details each of the 28 pieces with casual erudition, dispatching technical observations with an easy familiarity that bleeds into something more personal. She writes of how with every onset of the 22nd Variation she gets “a feeling of rebirth,” also explaining how much energy and focus variation 26 requires right after “emptying everything from inside yourself in Variation 25.” She first performed the masterpiece when she was just 16—she’s 58 now—and the work was instrumental to her early career after she won a 1975 competition playing it.…
In the liner notes for her dazzling new recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Hyperion), Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt details each of the 28 pieces with casual erudition, dispatching technical observations with an easy familiarity that bleeds into something more personal. She writes of how with every onset of the 22nd Variation she gets “a feeling of rebirth,” also explaining how much energy and focus variation 26 requires right after “emptying everything from inside yourself in Variation 25.” She first performed the masterpiece when she was just 16—she’s 58 now—and the work was instrumental to her early career after she won a 1975 competition playing it.…