Hannah Lang Artist Management

News,Tours and Special Projects

• Peter Hewitt is back in the recording studio this autumn to complete disc three of his Beethoven sonata cycle for the LITmus record label. So far the project has attracted terrific critical acclaim (see review below). The session will record the two sonatas Op.14 and the disc is filled up with the two sonatas Op.27 (no.2 is the so called “Moonlight” sonata.) The release will be ready for Christmas 2010.
• There was great drama at St David’s Hall, Cardiff in May when violinist Peter Fisher was stuck on the M4 motorway in miles of traffic jams. The Three Peters Trio was due to give a lunchtime recital and when it became apparent that they would be without violin the Welsh College of Music rushed over a pile music for cello and piano! With no rehearsal Peter Adams and Peter Hewitt gave a duo and solo recital which included a solo Bach cello suite and piano fantasias. The audience response was terrific and the Trio has been invited back with violin!!
• The Three Peters Piano Trio is now re-named as the TRIO PETRUS. A successful and busy season last year included concerts at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, Turner Sims Hall, Southampton and St John’s, Smith Square, London. Please contact Hannah@hannhlang.co.uk for further details.
• Pianist Peter Hewitt was recently invited by the London College of Music, Junior Department to give an afternoon of masterclasses for their 50 th Anniversary celebrations. The LCM special piano day was marked by a short recital and a three hour masterclass given by Peter Hewitt who was invited because of being a prominent student when the college was situated in Great Marlborough Street.
• The Litmus Trio has been giving rare performances of an original version of the Mendelssohn D minor Piano Trio Op.47. When first published Mendelssohn also included a flute part as an alternative to the Violin. The Litmus Trio gave a group of performances which have already led to return invitations.
• The recent US tour given by Hannah Lang and Peter Hewitt was an unqualified success. They gave eight recitals and a series of talks and masterclasses over a three week period with concerts in Berkeley, Las Vegas, Louisiana, Lincoln and Omaha ( Nebraska) and Pennsylvania. The reception to the concerts was terrific with ovations, exceptionally high CD sales and return invitations from all venues.
• The composition Strange Violin, are you following me? by Cecilia MacDowall has recently been published by Hofmeister. This work for violin and piano was commissioned by Peter Hewitt and Peter Fisher for a performance at a concert in aid of Cancerkin at St. John's, Smith Square, London in April 2008

Reviews in Full

International Record Review

Peter Hewitt (piano)

It would be all too easy to overlook a new CD of Beethoven’s Op.10 Sonatas from a small independent label, played by a relatively unknown young pianist, but I have been so impressed with this disc that I urge you to seek it out and listen to it. This is immensely musical and convincing Beethoven playing from an artist who has already earned well merited praise from Vladimir Ashkenazy, John Lill and Andras Schiff. The most impressive aspect of Peter Hewitt’s artistry is that at no time does he get in the way of the music – this is Beethoven speaking directly to us, a statement that can so rarely be applied these days, even to the playing of famous and widely acclaimed pianists.

Hewitt’s technique is flawless, and is always placed at the service of the music; he often reveals tiny details, within the overall phrase or paragraph, which one had either overlooked or forgotten, but which are in the score – and he does so in ways that do not impair the flow of the music. Not that I necessarily agree with every last dot and comma of these performances: I feel that his tempo for the Presto finale of the F major sonata is a shade too fast, but equally I found it compelling in its drive and in the revelation of Beethoven’s often humorous points, so that it is impossible to withhold praise – and in this movement, Hewitt’s closing bars are tremendous. His account of the slow movement of the D major sonata is indeed profound.

I do, however, withhold praise from the skimpy booklet notes, which ought to have been more carefully proof-read and which tell us very little about the music. I would also willingly have forgone the embarrassing poem, Visiting Beethoven by Edward Storey, written – we are told – in response to hearing these recordings. That page should have been given over to notes about Beethoven and his music.

This apart, here is the finest Beethoven piano sonatas debut disc I have heard in years; it deserves a place in every CD coll ection. The recorded sound is excellent.

Robert Matthew-Walker

RECITAL IS PERFECT END TO SEASON

Peter Fisher (violin) & Peter Hewitt (piano)
Plymouth City Museum

There could hardly have been a better way to end the current season of lunchtime concerts than this quite superb violin and piano recital.

Peter Fisher is an outstanding violinist, who is not only blessed with a consummate technique, but more so with the gift of truly expressive playing and an innate sensibility which never over-sentimentalises. This was very apparent in the lush harmonies of Korngold's incidental music to 'Much Ado About Nothing'. Here was glorious tonal richness combined with highly articulate playing, deftly colouring each of the four pieces with well-studied sense of characterisation.

Clive Jenkins's enchanting 'Pastorale and Allegro' once more proved an excellent vehicle for the pair, finely balancing the melodious qualities of this new work with just sufficient piquancy.

Franck's Sonata is as much a tour de force for the piano, as it is for the violin, and Peter Hewitt effortlessly demonstrated that he was more than equal to the task. The power and passion from the violin were well matched throughout, with Peter managing to squeeze every last ounce out of the piano with barely a protest, save for some occasionally intrusive pedal noise.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's 'Figaro' concluded proceedings with just the right combination of humour and panache, where both performers were not only making glorious music together, but were so patently enjoying themselves, sending the audience away on a real high, and eager for the start of the next season.

PHILIP R BUTTALL
Plymouth Herald

Concert in memory of Sir Charles Wilson proves to be an uplifting experience

Damian Thantrey (baritone), Peter Hewitt (piano)
Schubert: Winterreise

This wonderful opportunity for the University to remember the work of its first Vice-Chancellor, Sir Charles Wilson, who died in November last year at the age of ninety-two, was also the occasion at which to engage two young musicians, the baritone Damian Thantrey and pianist Peter Hewitt, to perform one of the greatest settings of poems to music - Schubert's song-cycle Winterreise. Amazingly, there is no record of the work having been featured in any University concert, at least over the past fifty years.

Charles Wilson was also keen to promote up-and-coming artists, so it was particularly appropriate that for the capacity audience in the Richard Attenborough Centre one of the masterpieces of a thirty-year-old composer should be interpreted by artists of roughly the same age. Winterreise had been meticulously prepared, the twenty-four heart-rending songs being sung from memory. It was, indeed, Damian and Peter's first performance of the work, and the singing and playing had the intensity that one experiences only on hearing or seeing something breathtaking for the first time. Their stage presence, too, in the "intimate setting of an expanded drawing room" (as one colleague put it), made it, at times, an almost unbearable experience.

Jane Mayers, Charles Wilson's daughter, who acted as the family adviser and who assured us that Schubert was a particularly favourite composer of her father's, was quick to respond: "I found the whole event quite amazing - that such an honour was done in the memory of my father both through the music itself and through the beautiful programme."

I can only add that in nearly twenty years at the University, there have rarely been evenings that matched this one.

Anthony Pither