BACH: The Toccatas – Angela Hewitt Hyperion

1
Toccata in C minor BWV911[12’12]
2
Toccata in G major BWV916[7’27]
3
Toccata in F sharp minor BWV910[10’22]
4
Toccata in E minor BWV914[6’49]
5
Toccata in D minor BWV913[11’42]
6
Toccata in G minor BWV915[9’00]
7
Toccata in D major BWV912[11’22]

Angela Hewitt returns to her beloved Bach with this stunning disc of some of the great master’s most joyous keyboard music. The toccatas are youthful, improvisatory, virtuoso works, composed in the aftermath of Bach’s trip in 1705 to Lübeck to hear the great Buxtehude (he travelled for ten days on foot to get there), perhaps the greatest organist of the time. Buxtehude was a master of the stylus fantasticus—a very unrestrained and free way of composing, using dramatic and extravagant rhetorical gestures; the influence of this technique can clearly be heard in the seven keyboard toccatas Bach composed sometime between 1705 and 1714.

Angela Hewitt’s Bach playing has won unanimous praise from all quarters for its rhythmic vitality, tonal clarity and poetic warmth. This is another outstanding issue in what is widely recognized as the benchmark modern recordings of Bach’s keyboard works.

All of the music on this album is also available as part of the specially priced box set Angela Hewitt plays Bach: ‘A magnificent retrospective of Angela Hewitt’s achievement as a pianist in the keyboard works of J S Bach … this remarkable set of recordings marks something of a milestone for everyone involved with classical music, as well as for Hyperion’ (MusicWeb International).