CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Angela Hewitt

Zankel Hall
Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 2:00 PM

Angela Hewitt, Piano

BACH The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II

Program Notes:

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II
Born March 21, 1685, in Eisenach; died July 28, 1750, in Leipzig.

Compiled in the years 1738–44, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, received its first complete Carnegie Hall performance in Carnegie Recital Hall (now Weill Recital Hall) on January 17, 1959, with Sheila Minzer, piano.

The year after Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the date 1722 on the title page of his first set of 24 preludes and fugues, The Well-Tempered Clavier, he left the court of Anhalt-Cöthen to take up his duties as Kantor of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. During the next 27 years until his death in 1750, he wrote a breathtaking amount of music—mostly sacred and secular cantatas, motets, masses, passions, and oratorios. Also from this time date the six keyboard partitas, the completion of the French Suites, the Clavierübung II and III, the “Goldberg” Variations, another set of 24 preludes and fugues, and, in the last few years, The Musical Offering and The Art of the Fugue. It is therefore not surprising that he left us with no fair copy of what is now known as Book II of the “48.” Time must have been scarce! He also had to direct the Collegium Musicum, train and discipline unruly choirboys, play at weddings and funerals, and deal with the town authorities who were a constant source of annoyance. On top of all that, he and his wife Anna Magdalena added 13 more children to their family—only six of whom survived infancy.

Bach did, however, leave us a composite manuscript, probably built up between 1739 and 1742. Each prelude and fugue is written out separately on a folded sheet of paper (prelude on one side, fugue on the other to avoid page turns), and several are copied out in Anna Magdalena’s hand. There is no title page, and three of them have been lost. Many corrections and revisions are visible, done at different times. After Bach’s death, this autograph probably went into the hands of his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, and we know that Muzio Clementi owned it in the 19th century. In 1896 it was acquired by the British Museum, where it remains today.

It would be easy if the story ended there. It does not. Bach continued to make revisions in copies belonging to his pupils right up until 1748—perhaps never giving us his final thoughts on the subject. The most important of these sources is the complete manuscript in the hand of Johann Christoph Altnickol (1719–1759), who became Bach’s son-in-law in 1749. It is dated 1744 and bears the title page:

"The Well-Tempered Clavier, Second Part,consisting of Preludes and Fuguesthrough all the Tones and Semitones,written by Johann Sebastian Bach,Royal Polish and Electoral Saxon Court Composer,Capellmeister and Directore Chori Musici in Leipzig."

After Bach’s death, individual preludes and fugues were published in various theoretical treatises, but it wasn’t until 1801–02 that not one but three complete editions of the “48” appeared. In the case of Book II, however, none was based on the British Library autograph which was then unknown. We have had to wait until the 1990s for editions to appear that take into account all of the available sources (the new Associated Board edited by Richard Jones, and the Neue Bach-Ausgabe edited by Alfred Dürr). The first English edition (a copy of which was passed down to me through my father’s family) was done by Samuel Wesley and C. F. Horn, and published in installments between 1810 and 1813 (with a different price for subscribers and non-subscribers). In their introduction, Wesley and Horn make the following claim:

"The 48 Preludes and Fugues, the first 12 of which are here presented to the Musical World (in a more correct manner than they have ever yet appeared, even in the Country where they were constructed) have always been regarded by the most scientific among scientific Musicians, (the Germans) as matchless Productions."

They give detailed recommendations on how to study them (slow practise, beginning with the less complicated ones), even advising the avoidance at first of those in C-sharp major, E-flat minor, and F minor “because they are set in Keys less in Use in England than upon the Continent, and therefore are at first puzzling.” Myriad signs are used in the text to mark each entry of the subject, its inversions, augmentations, and diminutions.

This complex history of Book II is the reason why so many variants appear in the editions we now have. In the end, of course, that is not the most important thing (bringing Bach’s music alive should be uppermost in the mind of the interpreter), but it is fascinating to see how his musical imagination was constantly seeking to embellish and improve. Indeed, several of the pieces survive in early versions probably dating from the 1720s and ’30s. For their inclusion in The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II, they underwent extensive revisions, enlargements, and often transpositions.

Copyright © 2007 Angela Hewitt

Angela Hewitt, Piano
Angela Hewitt is a phenomenal artist who has established herself at the highest level over the last few years not least through her superb, award-winning recordings for Hyperion. Completed in 2005, her 11-year project to record all the major keyboard works of Bach has been described as “one of the record glories of our age” (Sunday Times) and has won her a huge following. She has been hailed as “the pre-eminent Bach pianist of our time” (Guardian) and “nothing less than the pianist who will define Bach performance on the piano for years to come” (Stereophile). She has a vast repertoire ranging from Couperin to the contemporary. Her discography also includes CDs of Granados, Beethoven, Rameau, Chabrier, Olivier Messiaen, the complete solo works of Ravel, the complete Chopin nocturnes and impromptus, and three discs devoted to the music of Couperin. Her recordings of the complete solo keyboard concertos of J. S. Bach with the Australian Chamber Orchestra entered the billboard charts in the US only weeks after their release, and were named Record of the Month by Gramophone magazine. The first of a series of CDs featuring the music of Schumann will be released in 2007.

Ms. Hewitt has performed throughout North America and Europe as well as in Japan, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, Israel, China, Mexico, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union. Highlights of recent seasons include her debuts in Carnegie Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and with The Cleveland Orchestra, as well as a North American tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Her recitals have taken her to the festivals of Edinburgh, Osaka, Prague, Hong Kong, Schleswig-Holstein, Brescia/Bergamo, and Oslo, to name but a few. Her frequent Wigmore Hall and Royal Festival Hall recitals in London sell out months in advance. As a chamber musician she has joined international artists at Lincoln Center and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, and in June 2007 her recording of the Bach gamba sonatas with German cellist Daniel Mueller-Schott was released.

Ms. Hewitt’s entire 2007–08 season will be devoted to performances of the complete Bach Well-Tempered Clavier in major cities all over the world, including London (Royal Festival Hall), New York (Carnegie Hall), Los Angeles, Berkeley, Portland, Vancouver, Denver, Ottawa, Toronto, Mexico City, Bogota, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Macao, Sydney, Melbourne, Warsaw, Milan, Lisbon, Venice, Bilbao, Zurich, Stuttgart, Glasgow, Pretoria, and Cape Town. A special DVD lecture-recital on her interpretation of the music of J. S. Bach will be released by Hyperion at the beginning of her world tour, in September 2007.

In July 2005, Angela Hewitt launched her own Trasimeno Music Festival in the heart of Umbria near Perugia. Now an annual event, it draws an international audience to the Castle of the Knights of Malta in Magione, on the shores of Lake Trasimeno. Seven concerts in seven days feature Ms. Hewitt as a recitalist, chamber musician, song accompanist, and conductor, working with both established and young artists of her choosing.

Born into a musical family (her father was the Cathedral organist in Ottawa, Canada) Angela Hewitt began her piano studies at age three, performing in public at four and a year later winning her first scholarship. During her formative years, she also studied violin, recorder, and classical ballet. At nine she gave her first recital at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music where she later studied. She then went on to learn with French pianist, Jean-Paul Sévilla, at the University of Ottawa. She won First Prize in Italy’s Viotti Competition (1978) and was a top prizewinner in the International Bach competitions of Leipzig and Washington, DC, as well as the Schumann Competition in Zwickau, the Casadesus Competition in Cleveland, and the Dino Ciani Competition at La Scala, Milan. In 1985 she won the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition.

Angela Hewitt was named Gramophone’s Artist of the Year in 2006. She was awarded the first ever BBC Radio 3 Listener’s Award (Royal Philharmonic Society Awards) in 2003. She was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2000, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006. She has lived in London since 1985 but also has homes in Ottawa, Canada, and Umbria, Italy.

For more information, visit www.angelahewitt.com and www.bachworldtour.com.