Beethoven: Variations (2020)

This release is a complement to the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas by pianist Angela Hewitt, and it might make a good choice for those wanting to sample her Beethoven on a single album. This is because the variation sets that make up the program are ideally suited to Hewitt's style, which is clean, precise, and rhythmically restrained. She never tramples on details in her well-balanced performance of the big 32 Variations on an Original Theme, WoO 80, a clear look forward to the crucial role variations and re-thought ... Read More

This release is a complement to the complete cycle of Beethoven sonatas by pianist Angela Hewitt, and it might make a good choice for those wanting to sample her Beethoven on a single album. This is because the variation sets that make up the program are ideally suited to Hewitt's style, which is clean, precise, and rhythmically restrained. She never tramples on details in her well-balanced performance of the big 32 Variations on an Original Theme, WoO 80, a clear look forward to the crucial role variations and re-thought musical space, in general, would play in Beethoven's late style. There are sets based on operatic themes that show Beethoven colliding with what would have been the most popular music of his day, and, most fun of all, there are variations on God Save the King, WoO 78, and Rule Britannia, WoO 79, works that Beethoven proclaimed to be intended in admiration of the British monarchy, but that also contain a good quotient of humor that Hewitt catches subtly. The Jesus-Christus-Kirche in... Read Less