© Keith Saunders

Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt has been delighting audiences for years with her astounding Bach playing. One of Hewitt's trademarks is a bright and elegant rendition of the polyphonic music central to Johann Sebastian Bach. For her PianoEspoo concert, Hewitt brings a finely constructed programme, the main idea of which is the fugue – a polyphonic form of composition in which a solitary voice is magically joined by another voice and gradually by an increasing number of friends to engage in refreshing conversations with them. This wondrous effect also finds its way into works whose title does not immediately advertise the fugue. Bach's Partita no. 6, for example, contains several very impressive fugues that suggest the tragic E minor mood of the St Matthew Passion.

Another world-renowned Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, has written of the fugue as a phenomenon that it is 'one of the most durable creative devices in the history of formal thought and one of the most venerable practices of musical man.' These are big words for the fugue, and the pieces of this concert are definitely a tribute to it.

Program:

J.S. Bach: from the collection Das Wohltemperierte Klavier I

• Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV846

• Prelude and Fugue in C minor, BWV847

• Prelude and Fugue in D major, BWV850

• Prelude and Fugue in D minor, BWV851

• Prelude and Fugue in C flat major, BWV848

• Prelude and Fugue in C minor, BWV849

Felix Mendelssohn: Prelude and Fugue in E minor, Op. 35 No. 1
Dmitri Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue No. 18 in F minor, op. 87
Samuel Barber: Fugue from Piano Sonata in E flat minor, op. 26

- Intermission -

J.S. Bach: Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV830

• Toccata

• Allemande

• Corrente

• Air

• Sarabande

• Tempo di Gavotta

• Gigue

Tickets:

20–40 € + service fee

In collaboration with:

Ritarihuone Concerts