Beethoven: Piano Sonatas - Angela Hewitt

Drive Featured Album, from 27 July 2015 after 6pm

Angela Hewitt has been universally lauded for her previous recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas. Her pin-sharp and tastefully fluent approach is now applied to four further works spanning the composer’s career. 

Each of the sonatas here begin in spectacular fashion. The early Opus 2 No. 2 in A could be described as ‘Haydnesque’ - the sonata was dedicated to Beethoven’s former teacher - but the pianist manages to vividly bring out all the characteristics that demonstrate without doubt who the composer is and what potential he had to cause a stir in the music world. And in the final movement Hewitt effortlessly delivers the increasingly more complex rondo theme with its ‘hail-storm’ of triplets. Elsewhere, she endows deeply felt expression to the Piano Sonata in C minor, Opus 10 No. 1.

Hewitt's detailed and helpful sleeve notes demonstrate her superb attention to the details of every moment of these four works, and the formidable intelligence with which she tackles them.