Angela Hewitt

Bio

Angela Hewitt occupies a unique position among today’s leading pianists. With a wide-ranging repertoire and frequent appearances in recital and with major orchestras throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia, she is also an award-winning recording artist whose performances of Bach have established her as one of the composer’s foremost interpreters. In 2020 she received the City of Leipzig Bach Medal: a huge honour that for the first time in its 17-year history was awarded to a woman.

Conducting from the piano, Hewitt has led the Toronto and Vancouver symphony orchestras, Hong Kong and Copenhagen philharmonic orchestras, Lucerne Festival Strings, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Swedish and Zurich chamber orchestras, Salzburg Camerata, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in New York, Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa in Japan, and Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra in Vienna’s Musikverein. The upcoming 2023/24 season sees her performing with orchestras in Italy, Finland, Poland, Estonia and Switzerland, including on tour in the UK with Kammerorchester Basel as well as a tour of North East England with Royal Northern Sinfonia.

Elsewhere, Hewitt continues to present recitals, including concerts and festival appearances in Boston, Baltimore, Toronto, Ottawa, Rome, Zurich, Copenhagen, Cambridge and Stresa. She is also an artist-in-residence at London’s Wigmore Hall, where, back in 2016, she launched her Bach Odyssey, performing the complete keyboard works of Bach in a series of 12 recitals across the world; the cycle was also presented in New York’s 92Y, and in Ottawa, Tokyo and Florence, concluding in 2022.

Hewitt’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 discography also includes albums of Couperin, Rameau, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Fauré, Debussy, Chabrier, Ravel, Messiaen and Granados. The first CD of three Mozart albums, dedicated to the composer’s complete sonatas was released in November 2022, with the second slated for release in October 2023. In 2023, Hewitt’s complete catalogue becomes available on all major streaming platforms, following Universal Music Group’s acquisition of the independent classical label. Albums such as her critically acclaimed Diapson d’Or recording of the Goldberg Variations were included in the first release in July. A regular in the USA Billboard chart, her album Love Songs hit the top of the specialist classical chart in the UK and stayed there for months after its release. In 2015 she was inducted into Gramophone Magazine’s Hall of Fame thanks to her popularity with music lovers around the world.

Born into a musical family, Hewitt began her piano studies aged three, performing in public at four and a year later winning her first scholarship. She studied with Jean-Paul Sévilla at the University of Ottawa, and in 1985 won the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition which launched her career. In 2018 Angela received the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2015 she received the highest honour from her native country – becoming a Companion of the Order of Canada (which is given to only 165 living Canadians at any one time). In 2006 she was awarded an OBE from Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada, has seven honorary doctorates, and is a Visiting Fellow of Peterhouse College in Cambridge. In 2020 Angela was awarded the Wigmore Medal in recognition of her services to music and relationship with the hall over 35 years.

Angela lives in London but also has homes in Ottawa and Umbria, Italy where, eighteen years ago, she founded the Trasimeno Music Festival – a week-long annual event which draws an audience from all over the world.