INTERVIEW | Angela Hewitt | "find something that you love ... you will have a happy life no matter what else happens in your life"

In conversation with Angela Hewitt
Interviewed in London on 18 December 2019.

Angela Hewitt, © Jimmy Katz

Interviews can never paint a complete picture of an artist nor can it supplant an artist’s works. Instead, interviews present suggestions, pencilled sketches hinting at the coloured whole of greater beings. Yet the achievement of an artist, the art, is unquestionably a human product, and likewise, an artist's words speak of human qualities. Therefore, while an artist’s art and their words signify separate categories of experience, both experiences inevitably converge in their human essence. If there is at least a little bit of sense in believing that all encounters with art are also quests for human contact, interviews, for what they are worth, are also artful in their own musical flow.

The humanity of Ms Angela Hewitt's is one of reverence and inspiration. Her monumental Bach piano cycle for Hyperion Records, despite initial doubts, helped consolidate her reputation as one of the world's greatest living Bach interpreters. That she is the next recipient of the City of Leipzig Bach Medal and the Wigmore Medal only underscores the contrasting reality that she once had to personally send out invitations in attempt to fill up her own concert halls. Speaking about these things with Ms Hewitt at her London home, it was evident that in Ms Hewitt is a person of perseverance and individuality, as much as musical passions.

Yet life is also a subtle thing, and the visible is often rooted in seeming tangents. In her soft-spoken stories, Ms Hewitt spoke of her parents and teachers, the importance of church settings in initiating an appropriate musical education, and of her love toward Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann. The last minutes of the conversation delved into even broader territories, where we discussed the purpose of interviews and on Ms Hewitt's life philosophy.

Below is a transcript of the conversation. I have attempted with utmost care to represent the personality and words of Ms Hewitt and to retain the spirit of the entire conversation.

I.

Young-Jin Hur (YH): Ms Angela Hewitt, it’s a great pleasure to have you as a guest. How are you?

Angela Hewitt (AH): I am just fine, thank you. I’ve got one more concert before the end of the year. That takes place in Italy on the 27th of this month. I’ll be going there on Christmas Eve. But otherwise, people are away and concert promoters are winding down a bit, so it’s nice to have some quiet days where I’m not pressured to perform.

YH: Will you be back in London for the New Year?

AH: Yes I will be. I will go to Canada soon afterwards.

YH: It all sounds very nice.

AH: Yes.

YH: Talking about nice things, it has recently been announced you will be awarded the City of Leipzig Bach Medal and the Wigmore Medal next year (AH nods). Congratulations. What do these medals mean to you?

AH: Thank you. I think it was the Wigmore Medal that came first, which absolutely thrilled me when I heard about it. I will have played in Wigmore Hall for 35 years in January. My January 1985 Wigmore Hall debut was my first big concert in England. In 1985, when I moved to London on the week of my Wigmore Hall debut, the concert was one of two things I had lined up. I had my BBC audition... back then, the BBC still auditioned people for live performances. I had passed that, which was a difficult thing in those days. The auditions took place behind a glass wall and the BBC had failed a lot of people who went on to become famous (AH laughs). I had that and I had my Wigmore Hall debut lined up.

Wigmore Hall is also a rental venue. Especially if you are starting out, that’s what you do – you pay the hall to rent. Wigmore Hall doesn’t pay everyone who plays there. A lot of people don’t realise that. So for the first 15 years, I went to the hall on a yearly basis and put on a recital. I planned the programmes carefully with the concert manager, but a lot of the work had to be done personally. For example, I wrote the programme notes, wrote invitation letters, stamped those letters myself, and invited everyone I knew. I had to build up my audience. When I came to live in London I didn’t know anybody. But because I started recording the Bach cycle for Hyperion Records in 1994, that helped me get more attention.

Anyway, it took 15 years to get to the point where the hall would be sold out for me. It’s been 20 wonderful years since then, and I've performed there so frequently. So Wigmore Hall really is my home stage. It does mean a lot because those recitals have been the backbone of my career. Everything else that I have done happened because of what I have been doing at Wigmore Hall.

I heard about the City of Leipzig Bach Medal after the Wigmore Medal announcement. The news completely astounded me. It is a huge honour to get a Bach prize from the city where Bach lived for so long and is buried. Leipzig is a city that is synonymous with Bach's name and his music. To be the first woman and only the second keyboard player to receive this medal is a great honour. I was a competitor there at the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in 1976 when I was just a teenager. 44 years have passed since then (AH laughs). It’s a wonderful thing to celebrate that long trajectory and voyage to now.

(Note. A previous interviewee, Mr Nikolai Lugansky, was a silver-medalist of the Leipzig Bach competition in 1988. In that interview, we discussed his views on the competition and on Bach playing generally. Nowadays, he is most known for his Romanticism repertoire - the trajectory of artistic development is both unpredictable and fascinating.)

YH: I congratulate you once again. When you heard these two pieces of news, what were some of the first thoughts that went through your mind?

AH: Of course, you’re happy. With the Leipzig prize, I really wanted to tell my parents, who are both no longer alive. My mother accompanied me to Leipzig when I entered that Bach competition. My father was a marvellous Bach player himself at the organ. So they would have been so happy to know about this. Regarding the Wigmore Medal, I felt a great feeling of warmth because I owe a lot to the hall and they’ve shown such faith in me over the years. Many distinguished names have won these prizes, so it’s wonderful to be in their company. 

YH: You’ve just mentioned your parents. Your father’s influence is well documented and much spoken about. However, people rarely talk about your mother’s influence on you.

AH: You’re right. She was just as important because she was the one who gave me daily lessons. And she was a wonderful musician. She had gone to study the organ with my father but she was a pianist in her own right and a choir director, too. Actually, both of my parents were choir directors. She was a lovely and natural musician. Everything she did was always musical, as was the case with my father. My mother was especially very good with children. After I grew up, she went back to teaching and taught a lot of children. She was a wonderful teacher, and she really took an interest in all her pupils. When she gave me daily lessons, evidently I asked for them. I liked the lessons so much when she started teaching me on a real piano at the age of 3. Both my parents were actively involved in my musical education. It wasn't just the piano. I also learned to play the violin and recorder, learned to sing, and did classical ballet for 20 years.

II.

YH: You’ve immersed yourself so much in the works of Bach. Do you also enjoy Bach’s non-keyboard works?

AH: I do enjoy them. But if you want to play Bach's keyboard works, it is essential you have to also know the non-keyboard works. You cannot isolate Bach’s outputs. All his music, whether sacred or secular, was an expression of his faith. You have to know the B minor Mass, the St Matthew Passion, and you have to know some of the cantatas. I think it’s a huge advantage if you have the experience of singing in the choir, specifically singing in polyphony. To have that experience is such an advantage when you play for four voices with ten fingers. Beyond choral works, I have played the keyboard concertos that were written previously as violin concertos. The D major and G minor keyboard concertos were the E major and A minor violin concertos. I first played them on the violin years before I played them at the piano.

YH: What made you change from violin to piano?

AH: I was better at the piano. The piano was easier.

(both laugh)

At one point, I did play them side-by-side. I started the piano at the age of 3 and started the violin at the age of 6. When playing Bach's keyboard music, you sometimes have to think about the accentuation and articulation you would get from bowing a stringed instrument. So I am happy to have studied the violin.

YH: Are there examples of how your experience with some of Bach's choral works might have influenced your keyboard playing directly? After all, choral music is at the core of Bach's output. Or are the influences unconscious?

AH: The influences are not unconscious. The links are all there. In the Goldberg Variations alone, the rhythmic figure that you have in the bass from the first variation (AH hums a rhythmic tune) appears in a lot of the cantatas. Understanding Bach's time signatures and their meanings are also important. The pastoral 9/8 time signature you get, for instance, in variation 24 is something you see in the Christmas Oratorio. Then the two-note figure we have in variation 15 (AH hums) is a device Bach uses quite often. So yes, there are tons of connections.

YH: You’ve also mentioned that Bach’s faith is central to his output. In terms of finding connections, have you done anything to approach that faith?

AH: I went to church every Sunday as a kid. Since my father was a cathedral organist, we were always there. Whether one becomes a believer or not, I think, is not the main point. The point, however, is that having such church-going background is a huge advantage for musical reasons. It makes me sad to think that nowadays most kids grow up without experiencing church music, especially those who go on to play instruments. I also think the fact that we are a more secular society now is one of the reasons why classical music is fading away from many people’s lives. Church was a place where there was music and where people would sing. So going to church provided a wonderful introduction to music, not just to Bach but to church music in general, and furthermore, to the practice of connecting text and music. This last point merits special attention. Even if you are an instrumentalist with just notes in front of you, you always have to think, "what do the notes mean?" There’s always a meaning behind notes.

(Note. In my interview with Mr Philippe Herreweghe, Mr Herreweghe spoke strongly about the importance of understanding the link between music and text in fully experiencing a Bach cantata.

Relating to how church settings can play important musical roles, conductor Herbert von Karajan once said that to approach the music of Anton Bruckner, one has "to go to the church at St Florian to understand why the music is as it is, with so many pauses and such great spaciousness.")

YH: When you say you listen to these various works by Bach, how do you listen to them? Do you have a scheduled time during the day for concentrated listening? 

AH: I used to go to tons of concerts. But these days I am so busy with my own work. I listen to the radio a lot.

This reminds me of a story. About 5 years ago, I was in Leipzig to teach at a masterclass. One free afternoon, I walked into the Thomaskirche, just to realise a concert had just begun. So I sat down to listen. At the time, I would have been doing the Art of Fugue. On my seat, I could not stop imagining how I would have done things differently had I been conducting in place of the conductor.

(both laugh)

It’s always a good mental exercise to imagine how a non-keyboard work can be played on the keyboard.

YH: Are you interested in conducting at all?

AH: I don’t think I have enough time in my life to conduct. I’ve only conducted one work without playing a keyboard simultaneously. That was the cantata Ich habe genug.

YH: That’s an early one.

(Note. Here, I was thinking of the low Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis catalogue number allocated to this particular cantata, BWV82. In fact, the first version of the work was composed in 1727, making it a fairly mature composition by Bach.)

AH: It was with Gerald Finley as baritone at my festival. That was great. Unfortunately, there’s so little time in life.

YH: How true. There is only so much time for our interview as well. I’d love to talk so much more about what you’ve just said, but we’ll have to move on (AH nods).

III.

YH: Coming back to the topic of recent events, you have recently released a recording of Bach's keyboard Partitas for Hyperion Records.

AH: Yes, that’s right.

YH: This is your second recording of the works. What are your general thoughts about the recording? For example, are you happy with it?

AH: I am very happy with it. I recorded the Partitas almost exactly a year ago, in December 2018. In my Bach Odyssey, where I play Bach's complete keyboard works between September 2016 and June 2020, Partitas appeared quite frequently. For instance, I played the Partitas all over the world in 2017. I thought I needed to re-record the Partitas because my initial recording of them was one of my first recordings from my Hyperion Records Bach cycle, and released 20 years ago. During the 20 years, I have probably changed in some respects. Even the pianos have moved on. I have switched from the Steinway to the Fazioli now, at least in my recordings. My sound engineer is the same as before, but he’s come a long way since then. And the Partitas are such key pieces in the Bach keyboard repertoire. They are probably among his most popular and, in a way, most important, works. So I thought if I have to re-record, already having re-recorded the Well-Tempered Clavier and the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas should be revisited again.

YH: Indeed, you switched from the Steinway to the Fazioli, and the change in sound is immediately noticeable. I would also like to ask about your interpretation. You have previously spoken affectionately about the Allemande of the 4th Partita. When I compared that movement between the two recordings, you’ve become substantially slower. How aware were you of this change?

AH: When I recorded this time, I didn’t compare the recordings much at all. I didn’t go out of my way to try to play on a different tempo. Since I played the Partitas so many times in 2017, my interpretation of these pieces had also developed during this time. So I went into the studio with those concert performances in mind, rather than having the old recording in mind. I don’t think the differences are all that huge between the two recordings. There are a lot of little differences that add up to a big difference, perhaps.

YH: I agree. The general phrasings are very similar.

AH: It’s just 20 more years of life, you know. I think that these pieces gain from exposures and experiences.

I listened to all six Partitas in succession in the studio one afternoon to check what we had. I realised the benefits of doing this. How different number 6 is from number 1! How far we’ve travelled, although, for Bach, the traverse was only 6 years, since he published one a year. But wow! Also, when you can keep your concentration and listen to these works, you hear the immense variety in them, and how each Partita is its own beautiful creation. Anyway, I am very happy to have recorded these pieces again.

YH: So you used the momentum and experience you gained from previous concerts and used them for the recording.

AH: Yes. For number 6, I played the whole piece through on the first take. All 32 minutes or so. All the 6 pieces, on a whole, can be seen as concert performances.

YH: Given the reputation you now have that you didn't have 20 years ago, I can imagine there’s quite a lot of pressure.

AH: You go and do it, that’s it. You get up, you have breakfast, you get into in the recording environment, you warm up, this red light comes on, and that’s it.

(both laugh)

YH: There’s a surprising simplicity behind great achievements.

AH: You got to produce it or else, you can’t waste the record company’s money, sitting there, waiting for inspiration to hit.

(both laugh)

It does help that I have my own piano, of course. I bring my own Fazioli up from Umbria to the concert hall. We’re very careful regarding the place we choose for recording. Dobbiaco is a lovely, lovely hall with a warm sound. There’s no outside noise because it’s in the middle of the Dolomites. It’s a beautiful place even just to sit there and play.

YH: Given the importance of the historically informed performance movement, what you’ve done can almost sound sacrilegious… to play north German music in sunny Italy using an Italian piano! (YH laughs)

AH: The importance given to the historically informed performance style was much more prominent back in 1986. In 1986, I made a Bach recording for Deutsche Grammophon (DG) that came as part of the prize I won at the International Bach Competition in Toronto. The competition was held in the memory of Glenn Gould. The piano-harpsichord debate was a huge thing then because it was the heyday of the early music people, who were and are wonderful musicians, and who had big influences on me. But I never had a complex about playing Bach on a piano. I knew the pieces were written for the harpsichord but the piano was my instrument, and I had made special studies to play Bach correctly. If you play Bach as if you're playing Chopin, that was never going to work.

(Note. Although Ms Hewitt is nowadays not most known for her Chopin interpretations, at least seen through her recent recordings, she did win the Chopin Young Pianists' Competition in 1975. Her playing at the 1980 Chopin Competition has recently been released on disc.)

I know am digressing a bit, but this is important to say. By 1994, Deutsche Grammophon had decided not to continue with me, and I wasn’t willing to wait further to make another recording. So I personally gathered some money to record Bach's Two- and Three-Part Inventions. I wrote to all the major record labels to sell what I recorded, but many of them said that even though they know the recording will be good, they simply did not want to take Bach on a piano because that won’t sell. In the end, Hyperion Records took my recording, but they said they’ll only take it if I do a complete Bach cycle. I said, “sure, that’s my dream.” My recordings did sell. So in hindsight, the other labels were unwise about their initial decisions.

I am saying this to show that there was a time when playing Bach liberally was considered by many not to be the thing to do. Now, after I started recording Bach on the piano, a lot of other people started doing similar things. There are still debates, of course, and there will always be debates about how to play Bach on the piano. But that’s another story. Nowadays, playing Bach on the piano is accepted much more. Anyway, the Fazioli is a wonderful piano for playing Bach. It has its clarity, lightness of touch, and brilliant.

IV.

YH: The name Angela Hewitt is almost synonymous to the music of Bach ...

AH: (AH cuts in before the question is finished) Better than Tchaikovsky.

(both laugh)

YH: Is there a reason you say this?

AH: Well, because it simply is.

(both laugh)

AH: Bach makes greater music, and there’s more music to play for Bach than for Tchaikovsky.

YH: Does it irritate you sometimes because people mainly associate you with Bach? You do have a wider repertoire.

AH: Bach is the greatest composer. Of course, you have Beethoven and Mozart, and there are many great composers, but you cannot find a composer who is greater than Bach. So, if anything, I feel very privileged that I’ve been able to make a career and name playing the greatest music there is. Bach's music also requires, I think, the greatest musical intelligence. There’s nothing written on the score. There are many decisions you have to figure out personally. This does take a great deal of thought and preparation.

YH: You’re right. Bach doesn’t give clear tempo markings, for instance. Even his biographical information is sketchy. How do you deal with such high level of freedom?

AH: Well, for that question, you’ll have to watch my DVD.

(both laugh)

AH: I cannot put into a few minutes what I’ve lectured for about two and a half hours. I wanted to explain a lot of things in my DVD. Bach makes you think. There are clues you have to learn to recognise. You have to know the dances of the time, for example.

Anyway, I don’t mind being associated with Bach. I have a repertoire that goes from Couperin to contemporary music written for me. Even during the Bach Odyssey, I’ve played non-Bach repertoire, playing concertos and chamber music. As much as I adore Bach, I’d go crazy if I only played Bach. You also want to play the keyboard in different ways. You don’t want to play only within the range that Bach gave you (AH laughs), although my piano tuner often says that it’s funny that the very top of the piano has not been played that much. To this, I reply that these days I mostly play Bach and Beethoven… and the notes stop here (AH points at what seems like the upper right-hand side of an imaginary keyboard).

(both laugh)

Specifically, in terms of my non-Bach repertoire, I’m almost finished with my cycle of Beethoven sonatas. This has been very important for me. True, my Beethoven cycle doesn’t get as much attention as my Bach playing. Maybe when I finish the Beethoven cycle, it will get some attention. I just have the Hammerklavier and Op. 111 left. Although I’ve played Op. 111 before, I haven’t learned the Hammerklavier yet. Apart from Beethoven, I do a lot of French music, and some of the Romantic repertoire as well. My teachers always insisted on me having a wide repertoire.

YH: You've mentioned in quite a few interviews that Robert Schumann is one of your favourite composers.

AH: Yes.

YH: It occurs to me that so many musicians who specialize in Bach, such as Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Philippe Herreweghe, are passionate about Schumann. I found this fascinating, Schumann being the arch-Romantic he is. 

(Note. Mr Philippe Herreweghe spoke passionately about Schumann in my interview with him.)

AH: Schumann adored Bach, and I think you can hear this fact in a lot of Schumann's music. My teacher Jean-Paul Sevilla was a marvellous Schumann player. He instilled in me my understanding and love of Schumann. When I was 15 or 16, I heard Catherine Collard play Schumann, and I liked the freedom the music gave me. When I was a teenager and perhaps a bit timid, Schumann forced me to open up at the piano, which was a good thing. You can’t play Schumann and just be in yourself. A lot of his music is intimate but you then need to have this extraverted side as well, and everything in between.

V.

YH: I will move onto the last set of questions. I'd like to take a step back. As I interview musicians, I often wonder what the purposes of interviews are. We talk about music, but we cannot fully replace or describe music via a conversation (AH nods). Nor can we fully represent an artist's personality fully (AH nods again). As a musician who has done a lot of interviews, what do you think is the purpose of an interview?

AH: I think interviews give the public insights into your work and into the type of person you are. When these people then go and hear your performances, they feel they know you a little bit better. I think that’s very important. In my festival in Italy where we present a wide range of repertoire every night throughout an entire week, we often do interviews with artists before the concerts. This sets people at ease, and it gives them something to think about while they listen to the music. I think the insight into a person can tell a lot about that person's thoughts and the person's work. Interviews are also important because they can educate the audience. The audience might learn something they didn’t know about. In our conversation, for example, we talked about the fact that there aren't tempo markings in Bach's original scores.

YH: Actually, is there a question that you might have liked to be asked by me today?

AH: Hmm.

(both laugh)

YH: It’s the first time I ask this sort of question to anyone.

AH: Oh, I don’t know. I do know there are many questions out there.

YH: Yes, there are so many questions to ask anyway. I always have difficulties reducing questions for an interview. Once I start reading artist biographies, there are too many questions that come into mind.

(both laugh)

AH: Perhaps we can talk about the fact that I don’t think there are many artists who do as much business and admin work as I do. This includes organising festivals and concerts, sending fan mails, running online shops, for example. On top of running the festival itself, I run three friends associations all over the world for that. So I deal with charity and donations a lot. I book all my own flights, too (YH exclaims). These kinds of things could interest people because they learn that I don’t just sit at the piano. I’ve done a lot of that in my life (YH laughs). But all the other things take up an immense time of my life. If someone orders a CD through my online shop, I’m the one who gets the email. I go up to the post office and send the orders off. The online shop drawer is just there (AH points to a drawer).

YH: The readers have to know about this! I am so glad I asked this question!

(both laugh)

AH: So, please don’t order all at once.

YH: Sure.

(both laugh)

AH: You make a fan for life. If I reply to emails, at first the senders do not believe that I am the one writing back. But sooner or later, they realise they are talking to me directly. Then they tell me a little anecdote or two about how they first got to hear me play. I sometimes answer back by asking if they’d like an autograph.

YH: What a lovely story!

AH: I enjoy this personal contact. I wouldn’t be anything without my audience. I’m not a Glenn Gould in that respect, and I really need my audience. In return, I respect them for wanting to hear me. I always try to give them my best. After every concert, I do a CD signing. I like the contact with people, and people seem to appreciate that.

YH: My respect toward you has just gone up. Make no mistake – it was high before. But now that's gone higher.

(both laugh).

AH: Everybody who writes about my festival to me gets a personal answer from me. Anyone who donates gets a personal thank you message from me, too.

YH: I don’t mean to compare myself to you, but when I used to sell CDs through online marketplaces, I would insert a paper note in every CD I sold. On those pieces of paper, I handwrote the songtext of Schubert's An die Musik.

(Note. An die Musik (D547), one of Franz Schubert's most loved songs, is a setting of Franz von Schober's poem of the same title. Songtext, translated into English: 

O blessed art, how often in dark hours,

when the savage ring of life tightens round me,

have you kindled warm love in my heart,

have transported me to a better world!

Often a sigh has escaped from your harp,

a sweet, sacred harmony of yours

has opened up the heavens to better times for me,

O blessed art, I thank you for that!)

AH: And, did people answer?

YH: Yes, people liked this a lot. Some of them sent me personal messages to say that the poem was a lovely touch.

AH: Yes, often when you order a CD from the marketplace, there isn’t even a receipt inside. It’s just a CD stuffed in an envelope.

YH: To have a special connection with others is an important part of music-making.

AH: Yes, yes. Sure.

YH: I will ask you one final question. The answer can be as short as you want.

AH: Okay.

YH: What is your life philosophy?

AH: Oh, I’m not someone to have a big philosophy (AH pauses). I think if you can find something that you love doing, which I have been very fortunate about, and if you work hard and give it all you have, you will have a happy life no matter what else happens in your life. For some people, it takes longer than others to discover what they love. I think everyone has a gift for something, but it’s very important that they discover what that is (AH laughs). And you don’t get anywhere without doing all the work. This can apply to anything, be it relationships, friendships, or work. So perhaps that’s my philosophy. The more you put in, the more you get back (AH laughs).

YH: Well, that’s a wonderful thing to hear at the end of a conversation. You mentioned happiness, so I hope that everyone who will attend your concert later this month will have much happiness.

AH: Thank you.

YH: Thank you very much for your time.

Angela Hewitt, © Richard Termine

Young-Jin Hur

@yjhur1885