The Whole Music Experience

Top Album Best of Ravi Shankar, Arc Music  2. Javier Perianes, Debussy Meets Chopin, Harmonia Mundi 3. Godwanda Dawn (South African and Indian), Arc Music 4. William Byrd Ensemble, In the Company of William Byrd, Scribe Records 5. Angela Hewitt and Andrea Oliva, Bach's Flute Sonatas, Hyperion  6. Stile Antico, The Phoenix Rises, Harmonia Mundia 7. La Nuova Musica, Handel/Vivaldi Dixit Dominus, Harmonia Mundi 8. Ballake Sissoko, At Peace, Six Degrees  9. Jerusalem Quartet and Sharon Kam, Brahms Clarinet Quintet, Harmonia Mundi 10. Orchid Ensemble, Life Death Tears Dream, independent release

Classical Andrea Oliva Angela Hewitt Bach Flute Sonatas Hyperion Records   I feel pleased to start out a new year with the enchanting Bach Flute Sonatas performed by pianist Angela Hewitt and flutist Andrea Oliva.   Out of all the Bach recordings I have heard, I don’t recall hearing tranverse flute (at least not in a sonata setting), but I have heard plenty of recorders.   Towards the end of Bach’s life, the tranverse flute replaced recorders, even though recorders of various types still exist in our time.   As always, questions revolve around the compositions, whether or not Bach co-composed them or if they were written for transverse flute or oboe as in the case with the Sonata in G minor , which might Bach might have co-composed with his son C P E Bach.   Whatever the history is behind the flute sonatas, Oliva and Hewitt breathe a fresh of new air into them.   The original musicians would have played the sonatas on piano and ...

Angela Hewitt Plays Handel & Haydn Hyperion Records In the past I have listened to award-winning Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt’s Bach recordings, which I found as delicious as the Bach interpretations of the late Glenn Gould (also Canadian). So when I put the Handel & Haydn CD into my player, I thought I was listening to Bach. I even pulled the CD out of my computer to make sure that Hyperion had not made a mistake and accidentally put a Bach recording in the jewel case. They had not. I read Hewitt’s liner notes in which she discussed the similarities between George Frideric Handel’s Suite No 2 in F major and Bach’s repertoire. “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.” I would say the same about Chaconne (with 21 variations) in G major , which Hewitt opens the recording. But why should any of this surprise me? Handel and Bach were contemporaries, both of Germanic ...