Tags
Angela Hewitt, Classical music, Classical music review, Domenico Scarlatti, Hyperion, Piano Sonatas
“The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails”
It was searching for a You Tube video with Scarlatti piano pieces, to illustrate a post which happily brought me to the first of Angela Hewitt’s Scarlatti series CD
As Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) wrote over 500 piano sonatas, Hewitt’s intention, as I understand it, is to release more CDs, with a selection of the sonatas which she believes could work well together, as in a concert setting. They are quite short, most typically between 3 and 6 minutes. She has chosen and grouped the programme into sequences which she believes work well together, rather than the more obvious sequential, with the major and minor paired. She explains in the liner that sometimes one of a pair is weaker than the other which would make listening a more uneven experience
Hewitt not only plays these, deliciously, as if in some miraculous way music just happened to pour out from her fingertips, but she also writes liner notes of great clarity and illumination. Though the notes will I assume make even more sense to musicians, they are full of insightful pointers that open the pieces out to greater enjoyment still, for non-musicians
I know that these pieces, most of them, are clearly not easy to play – the rapidity of notes, the interesting rhythms, the fiendish, darting crossing of hands, trills, turns, dabbed at notes, but the glory is that I was not sitting jaw dropped in admiration at what must be the strength, flexibility and control in the bones, nerves and muscles of her hands. I had no sense of the effort such mastery must take. Instead, this sense of music as an absolutely natural dynamic – like water racing over over pebbles in a stream, breezes whipping through leaves
The first two lines of a long forgotten poem, Sunday Morning by Louis Macneice flashed through my mind as I listened to Hewitt dance through these pieces – many of them were indeed dance inspired, dance rhythms
Down the road someone is practising scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Not that Hewitt’s playing sounds like the practising of scales, but it is quicksilver
Scarlatti by Domingo Antonio Velasco 1738
Unfortunately, I had been hoping to find a You tube of a single sonata, by Hewitt, to embed, but alas, there is none, only the short compilation by Hyperion of this 2015 CD
Volume 2 of her Scarlatti sonatas will no doubt make its appearance here in due course. I have that pleasure to explore when I have soaked myself thoroughly in this first CD
However, I did find quite an interesting series of short lectures on ‘the Scarlatti Effect’ . The other three can be found on YouTube and there are of course other videos of other Scarlatti interpreters playing some of the 500. But for the moment, just leave me with Hewitt, whilst leaves, breezes, fountains, silvery shoals of fish and brooks-a-babbling pour from her fingers
There is a fairy story about a girl blessed by a fairy, so that each time she spoke, sparkling gems of great riches, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and pearls, fell from her mouth. That must have been a bit of a burden, actually, far better to receive the gift of pouring music from fingertips!
Angela Hewitt Scarlatti Vol 1 Hyperion Amazon UK
Angela Hewitt Scarlatti Vol 1 Hyperion Amazon USA
Lady Fancifull 
Also not available as an MP3, surprisingly for such a recent release. Nice to see you doing a music review – I feel it’s been a while since we last saw one… 🙂
Yes, I forgot to point out that there is no MP3 – not for this one, not for the other Hyperion one released in 2017. I’m not quite certain why I hadn’t done a music review for a while. I do enjoy doing them.
Lovely post, and I shall go off and explore – I’m woefully narrow in my appreciation of classical music, sticking mostly to Shostakovich. And I feel now I should be reading more Louis Macneice ….
Ha Ha – got you in two. I adore classical music and am woefully narrow in my appreciation of popular music! And unfortunately my most genuinely musicianly Catholic friend, who just is broad church, has studied music, arranges, plays, composes, teaches, now lives abroad, and so fails to subject me to popular music in her car and flat, forcing me to broaden my appreciaition
I love your visual for this dancing music. I watched mesmerised by the waves of flocking birds as I listened to Scarlatti. I do like the bringing together of different art forms to illuminate and expand on each. Waves of birds, a wink of fish tails and quicksilver notes – thank you for a wonderful lightness of expression ….
Thank you underrunner. I really enjoyed the conception and writing of this post due to the joy that Scarlatti and Hewitt were creating, as I listened.
Thinking about non-verbal connections in my reading and searching for them is probably the aspect of blogging I most enjoy and I think it deepens my appreciation of the flavour of a work, be it music or writing
I got to hear Angela Hewitt playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations last year, and the experience was sublime. I’m a bit stuck in my Bach fan-girldom at the moment (and have tickets to hear Hewitt again when she returns to Wales in April to play part 1 of his Well-Tempered Clavier) but you’ve tempted me to branch out and check out the Scarlatti!
I have the Goldberg – which is a bit more challenging for me, as I am joined at the hip to Glenn Gould’s interpretations. Hewitt’ s very different. She is in London, too, and you have reminded me I need to check my diary and move fast if I can go.