Angela Hewitt: Notes on the Program
“charm, balance, proportion, ferocity”
Balance, proportion, scale, clarity, good taste, evident form, ornamentation evolved from content -- all of these descriptors of the baroque and classical periods are matters that too often seem lacking in contemporary art and music. Of course, romantic, modern, and contemporary music have wonderful, other devices and affekts, but many classical music lovers, and anyone for that matter, at least from time to time, long for that earlier aesthetic. I am among them, although I treasure so much music from after their period up through the present day.
Thus, it seems exceptionally fun and appropriate that we conclude PPI’s 2024-25 season with the long-anticipated return of this year’s guest artistic curator, Angela Hewitt. Her concert repertory is vast and quite varied from ancient to contemporary, but she is quite celebrated world-wide most of all for the kind of music that we will hear today.
With the ubiquity of music in our lives, and too much of “background music” being bastardized versions of classical and romantic pieces, it can be easy to slip into passive listening mode, just getting lulled into being wrapped in pretty sounds. But, because Angela will be playing, I invite you to listen closely for that evident form, balance & proportion, clarity, and vivid ornamentation ennobling melodies. Thus, here are Angela’s own notes directly from her various recordings of these works, excerpted here, plus a little musing on the Brahms from me.
Handel, Suite No. 2 in F Major
“In the year this recording was made [2009], we celebrate the 250 th anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and the 200 th anniversary of the death of Franz Joseph Hayden (1732-1809). Such an occasion gives us the chance to better acquaint ourselves with two composers who were remarkably popular and celebrated in their lifetimes. (Handel more than Bach, Haydn even more than Mozart), and yet who were later overshadowed and somewhat forgotten until they regained their popularity in the last century. Handel was feted in England (he lived there from 1712 until his death), became a British citizen, and his funeral in Westminster Abbey, where he is buried in Poet’s Corner, was attended by 3,000 people. Haydn (who sojourned twice in England, in 1791-92 and 1794-95) was equally loved by the English, but his renown reached as far as Stockholm, St. Petersburg, and even Cádiz.
“My own experience with Handel – apart from learning some of the easy keyboard pieces and turning pages for my father when he played the organ in Messiah or excerpts from the Water Music at weddings – began with playing some of his sonatas on the violin and recorder, two other instruments I studied as a child. When I was fifteen years old, and already studying at university as a special student, we were given the Suite No. 2 in F Major as a quick study in our end-of-year exams – to learn and memorize (optional, but I did it) in a week. I was struck then by the exquisite beauty of the opening movement, as I still am now every time I play it.
“I have already remarked on the exquisite opening of the Suite No. 2 in F Major, HWV 427. If you play this for somebody without telling them who wrote it, I bet the last person they would name would be Handel. Many would say Bach. Below a beautifully florid melody (the ornamentation is mostly written out), a stately bass gradually descends the scale, jumping up an octave twice to start another descent, the last time with more chromaticism thrown in. This mediation ends in A minor, leading us without pause into the subsequent Allegro. This is an instrumental piece (the top line could easily be played by the violin) transcribed for keyboard. The third-movement Adagio needs some additional ornamentation added by the performer. That was the only clue given to me by my professor when I learned it as a quick study, and I still stick mostly to what I sketched in all those years ago. The flourishes, though, in the last two bars are original Handel, and I can’t claim to have invented those! The concluding Allegro is a four-voice fugue with a very affirmative subject. Handel’s part-writing may not be as sophisticated and masterful as Bach’s, but this is still an excellent example of his polyphonic style.”
Bach, French Suite No. 6 in E Major
“The rhythms of the dance have always provided composers with a vital source of inspiration. Bach was no exception, and a very high percentage of his music is related to the dance, whether or not it bears such a title. Perhaps this is largely what gives it that marvelous vitality and spirit, and why it is so immediately appealing. Although Bach’s music was never meant to be used for actual dancing, and indeed many of the dances, with time, developed into keyboard compositions quite far removed from their origins, the study of their main characteristics, tempos, rhythmic traits, and even steps (if we are fortunate enough to know someone who can dance the Baroque courante or minuet!) is essential to their understanding.
“The six French Suites, which contain some of Bach’s most attractive keyboard writing, provide us with such an opportunity. The arrangement of contrasting dances, all in the same key, into a suite makes for a very satisfying musical experience.
“Finally, why are they called “French” suites? No satisfactory explanation has ever been given, and Bach himself never described them as such, simply entitling them, “Suites pour le clavessin” (“Suites for harpsichord”.) The adjective first appears twelve years after his death. Perhaps it was to distinguish them from their predecessors, the six English Suites (although these are more French in style than the French Suites). More importantly, these works will continue to be endlessly absorbing and deserve to be heard more frequently on the concert platform.”
Haydn, Sonata in E-flat Major
“Haydn once admitted: ‘I was a wizard on no instrument, but I knew the strength and working of all.’ The ‘all’ even included the kettle-drums. Listening to the last of his piano sonatas, the Piano Sonata in E-flat Major, Hob XVI:52, one could be excused for thinking that Haydn must have been a virtuoso pianist. But, in fact this piece was written in 1794 for yet another gifted female, Therese Jansen, who was a pupil of Muzio Clementi and a popular pianist and teacher in London. Haydn was a witness at her wedding to the art dealer Gaetano Bartolozzi the following year. She could not have been lacking in technique, as this is the most demanding of all of Haydn’s piano works. But it requires more than technique. All of the trademarks of Haydn’s style are present: the sudden dynamic contrasts, the expressive silences, the wit, the charm, the surprises, and most of all the juxtaposition of remote keys. The outer movements of course are both in E-flat Major, but the middle movement appears in E Major which could not come as more of a shock. Haydn has unwittingly prepared us for that with a few brief bars in that key during the development section of the first movement, but the surprise is still great. It is interesting to note that while Haydn was writing his last three piano sonatas, his pupil Beethoven was publishing his first three (the Op 2 set which he dedicated to his teacher). And not only that, but the sublime slow movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in C Major, Op 2, No 3, is also in E Major. The Haydn is sophisticated music, masterfully crafted and brought to a brilliant conclusion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Haydn was often labelled ‘childlike’ (E. T. A. Hoffman started it in 1810 when he said Haydn’s compositions expressed ‘a childlike mood of serene wellbeing’). A book I had as a child (and still have), first published in 1936, was entitled Haydn, The Merry Little Peasant. Nothing could be less appropriate for this last piano sonata. I think Brahms was more apt when he wrote in 1896, the year before he died: ‘What a man: beside him we are just wretches.’”
Handel, Chaconne in G Major
“It was while in England that Handel probably wrote most of his keyboard compositions. The Chaconne was first published in 1733, but his ‘First Set of Suites’ appeared in 1720. They were most likely written in 1717 when Handel was resident composer at Cannons – an estate in Edgware, razed to the ground in 1747. As some of the movements had previously been published in an unauthorized copy while Handel was away from London, he felt it necessary to explain this in his dedication to the English nation:
I have been obliged to published Some of the following lessons because Surrepticious and incorrect copies of them had got abroad. I have added several new ones to make the Work more usefull which if it meets with a favourable reception: I will still proceed to publish more reckoning it my duty with my Small talent to Serve a Nation from which I have receiv’d so Generous a Protection.
“Soon after . . . I first played the Chaconne in G Major, HWV 435, at a workshop on piano literature. I learned it from a collection called Le Panthéon des Pianistes which of course was highly suspect and heavily edited. But we cared less about such things in those days! The work makes a great opener in recital, as indeed it does for this recording. In the Baroque era, the chaconne was a triple-metre composition whose bass line and harmonic structure, normally descending stepwise (as it does here in the first four bars), is used as an outline for subsequent variations. These variations often begin with figurations that get quicker as we go along: for instance, after the theme, in which the predominant note value is a crotchet, the first two variations introduce quavers, the next two variations go into triplet, and the next four are in semiquavers. The figuration jumps from one hand to another while the musical content remains relatively simple. Variation 9 turns to the minor mode and a slower tempo. The mood becomes lyrical and expressive, even plaintive. The next eight variations (9-16) stick to the minor, and for me really make this piece something special. Again, we have a quickening of note values, but also a suggested quickening of tempo (nothing is written in the score to tell us to do so, but it seems a very natural things to do). The notes are no longer just for show, but rather their gestures (two-note sighs, descending scales) add a great deal fo expressive content. Variation 15, with descending octaves in the bass, builds up the excitement, leaving the last minor variations, number 16, quite vehement in its emotion.”
Brahms, Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, op. 24
(BC here.)
One sees what may still be done in the old forms when someone comes along who knows how to use them. – Richard Wagner commenting on the Handel Variations. It is perhaps inappropriate of me (sorry!) to begin this comment by saying that this is one of my very, very most favorite pieces of music, or maybe any art, in the whole world. But, there you are. I ache for its majesty and vivacity all the time. I listen to many recordings of it, play it for myself often at home, and prod friends constantly to do the same. I am thrilled silly that Angela is concluding her program today with it.
About it, though, I think it best to quote some “authorities”. Biographer Jan Swafford describes the Handel Variations as “perhaps the finest set of piano variations since Beethoven”, adding, “Besides a masterful unfolding of ideas concluding with an exuberant fugue with a finish designed to bring down the house, the work is quintessentially Brahms in other ways: the filler of traditional forms with fresh energy and imagination; the historical eclectic able to start off with a gallant little tune of Handel’s, Baroque ornaments and all, and integrate it seamlessly into his own voice, in a work of massive scope and dazzling variety.”
Composed in 1861, this set was an early example of his lifelong cultivation of variations forms. He dedicated it to his “beloved friend,” Clara Schumann, giving it to her on her 42 nd birthday in September that year. She played it publicly in December and reported, “I was in agonies of nervousness, but I played them well all the same, and they were much applauded. Johannes, however, hurt me very much by his indifference. He declared that he could no longer bear to hear the variations, it was altogether too dreadful for him to listen to anything of his own and to have to sit by and do nothing.”
The theme is the “air” from Handel’s B-flat Major harpsichord suite, published in 1733. Brahms owned a copy of the first edition and must have revered this particular little movement. He detailed his approach to writing variations in a number of letters: “In a theme for a set of variations, only the bass has any meaning for me. But this is sacred to me, it is the firm foundation on which I then build my stories.
“What I do with a melody is only playing around, ingeniously playing around. If I vary only the melody, then I cannot easily be more than clever or graceful, or, indeed, if full of feeling, deepen a pretty thought. On the given bass, I invent something actually new, I discover new melodies in it, I create. The role of the bass is critical.”
Thus, he proceeded with an exceptional range of expression and character derived from the theme, rendered as a thrilling journey in an exceptional musical landscape, variously with a Siciliana, a canon, a musette, and more, and, finally a tremendous fugue. There is not a moment in the whole of it that is not intriguing, both for heart and mind. I have such strong feelings of gratitude every time I hear the Handel Variations. Best wishes for whatever feelings arise for you hearing it today.