Biography Wikipedia
Wikipedia:
Angela Hewitt, OC OBE (born July 26, 1958) is a Canadian classical pianist. She holds British nationality through her father, Godfrey, who was the organist and choirmaster at Christ Church Cathedral in Ottawa, Ontario for almost fifty years.
Career
Angela Hewitt began her piano studies at the age of three with her mother, performed in public at four, and won her first scholarship at five. In addition to the piano, she studied violin with Walter Prystawski, recorder with Wolfgang Grunsky, and ballet with Nesta Toumine in Ottawa. Her first full-length recital was in The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto at the age of nine where she studied from 1964 to 1973 with Earle Moss and Myrtle Guerrero. She then went on to be the student of French pianist, Jean-Paul Sevilla at the University of Ottawa. She placed first in the Gian Battista Viotti competition in 1978 and also in that year won the piano category of the CBC Talent Festival. She was also a prize-winner in the Bach Competitions of Leipzig (1976) and Washington, DC (1975), the Schumann Competition in Zwickau (1977), the Casagrande Competition in Terni (1976), the Dino Ciani Competition at La Scala in Milan (1980), and the Casadesus Competition in Cleveland (1979). In 1985 her international career was launched when she was awarded First Prize in the Toronto International Bach Piano Competition, a unique event held in memory of Glenn Gould. Part of her win was a recording with Deutsche Grammophon of works by J.S. Bach which was nominated for a Gramophone Award.
Angela Hewitt has performed around the world in recital and as soloist with orchestra. Her recordings on the Hyperion label are best sellers and show her extensive repertoire. She is most well known for her cycle of Bach recordings which she began in 1994 and finished in 2005—covering all the major keyboard works of J.S. Bach. These have now been released by Hyperion as a box set of fifteen CDs. Her discography also includes works by Couperin, Rameau, Messiaen, Chabrier, Ravel, Schumann, Beethoven and Chopin. In 2010 she recorded her first disc of Mozart concertos with the Orchestra da Camera di Mantova which will be released in 2011.
Angela Hewitt’s entire 2007-2008 season was devoted to performances of the complete Bach Well-Tempered Clavier in major cities all over the world, including London (Royal Festival Hall), New York (Carnegie Hall), Los Angeles, Berkeley, Portland, Vancouver, Denver, Ottawa, Toronto, Mexico City, Bogota, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul, Macao, Sydney, Melbourne, Warsaw, Milan, Lisbon, Venice, Bilbao, Zurich, Stuttgart, Glasgow, Pretoria, and Hong Kong. A special DVD lecture-recital entitled Bach Performance on the Piano was released by Hyperion to coincide with the tour. Before the end of the tour, she re-recorded the work which was released by Hyperion in 2009 to great critical acclaim from around the world.
In July 2005, Angela Hewitt launched her own Trasimeno Music Festival in the heart of Umbria near Perugia. Now an annual event, it draws an international audience to the Castle of the Knights of Malta in Magione, on the shores of Lake Trasimeno. Seven concerts in seven days feature Hewitt as a recitalist, chamber musician, song accompanist, and conductor, working with both established and young artists of her choosing.
After living in Paris from 1978 to 1985, Angela Hewitt has made London her main residence. She also has homes in Ottawa and Umbria, Italy. In 2000, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada (OC). She was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) on June 17, 2006. Angela Hewitt was named Gramophone Artist of the Year in 2006, received the MIDEM Classical Award for Instrumentalist of the Year in 2010, and awarded the first ever BBC Radio 3 Listener’s Award (Royal Philharmonic Society Awards) in 2003. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and has honorary degrees from the University of Ottawa, the University of Toronto, Queen's University (Kingston), the Open University (London), Mount Saint Vincent University (Halifax), and the University of Saskatchewan.