J.S. Bach and Mozart with Angela Hewitt

Bach specialist Angela Hewitt is conductor and piano soloist in a program of works displaying the nimbleness and ingenuity of Bach, and his successor, Mozart, in composing concertos and chamber works that pushed musical boundaries. Bach has been the backbone of Hewitt’s career. She was immersed in his music through her father, a cathedral organist, and recalls, “I danced to Bach, sang Bach, played him on the violin and recorder . . . and in the end put all that experience into playing his music on the piano.” Her Hyperion recording of all the major keyboard works was hailed as “one of the record glories of our age” (The Sunday Times) and she recently completed the Bach Odyssey, performing them in concerts worldwide. Hewitt leads from the keyboard in the D-minor and G-minor concertos. 

Bach’s astonishing compositional output found him often reworking pieces for different occasions and instrumentations. Such is the case with his keyboard concertos, which are all transcriptions of works for other solo instruments, adapted for harpsichord in Bach’s time. The Concerto in D minor is believed to have been transcribed from a lost work for another instrument. His Concerto in G is a transcription of his own Violin Concerto in A minor.   

Mozart was also a restless composer whose prolific output can be seen in works created in just a few months of 1784. His notebooks document the premiere of his Quintet for Piano and Winds, K.452 just two days after its composition in March. The Concerto No. 17 came a month later, and Mozart also recorded the oft-repeated story that its last movement variations were inspired by a pet starling he had just purchased, which could whistle its main theme, while adding some variations.