Ravinia 2025 Issue 1

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations , BWV 988 (1741) June 11: Angela Hewitt piano Few works hold a more hallowed place in the solo piano literature than this aria (repeated at the end) and set of 30 variations, which are named for Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who is said to have been the first—and, at the time, most frequent—per- former of them. As the title page makes clear, Bach intended the work to be played on the harpsichord, but it has more regularly been heard in modern times on the piano, as they will be here. The most famous 20th-century performer of the works was Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who recorded the set in 1955 and 1981. The first edition rocketed him to stardom, selling 40,000 copies by 1960 and 100,000 by the time of his death in 1982—big numbers for the classical field. Hewitt is a renowned interpreter of Bach—herself a Canadian pianist with two venerated recordings of “the Goldbergs,” from 1999 and 2015—and she is celebrating the 50th anniversary of her first public performances of the piece, with a tour devoted to the Variations . Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, op. 57, Appassionata (1804–5) June 21 ( 1:30 p.m. ) : Tony Siqi Yun piano Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas, which date from 1795 to 1822 and mark his extraordi- nary evolution as a composer and human being, are arguably the most important set of keyboard works since J.S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Klavier . They encompass a vast emotional range and pose daunting technical and interpretative challenges, especially the later ones, which were so “ahead of their time” when they were composed that they still seem contemporary and other-worldly. Many famed pianists have recorded the complete set, starting with Artur Schnabel in the 1930s and continuing more re- cently with those of such pianists as Richard Goode, Stephen Kovacevich, Igor Levit, Maurizio Pollini, and András Schiff. Among the most the famous and stormiest of these sonatas is the Appassionata , which falls within the composer’s “Middle Period,” at the same time he was beginning to write his fifth symphony. Taking on the work in his Ravinia debut is the Canadian-born Yun, gold medalist at the 2019 First China International Music Competition, where he gave the first of now several performanc- es with conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 23 KEITHSAUNDERS(HEWITT);DARIOACOSTA(YUN)