How Angela Hewitt gets the most out of her recording sessions

"I'm not one who likes to start at eight in the morning," conceded Angela Hewitt with a laugh during a recent conversation with CBC Music — a surprising admission for someone so eminently productive.

We reached the classical pianist at her home in London, England, ahead of the Feb. 4 release of the final instalment in her Beethoven sonata cycle on Hyperion Records, comprising Op. 106 ("Hammerklavier") and the final piano sonata, Op. 111. It's the 56th title in her Hyperion catalogue.

Her Beethoven cycle has been 16 years in the making — the first album appeared in 2005 — but Hewitt's conception of his sonatas was actually shaped decades earlier.

"I worked with Roger Norrington back in 1987 and attended all his Beethoven symphony concerts in 1987 and '88," she recalled. "That just opened my eyes, you know? It was like a knock over the head. So, I applied everything I heard to the piano sonatas, and that really changed them for me from what I had known."

Famous for recording the complete keyboard works of J.S. Bach, Hewitt explained how Hyperion's founding director, the late Ted Perry, got the ball rolling on Beethoven.

"Ted just had this wonderful musical instinct for things. Before he died — and his son, [current Hyperion director] Simon, told me this — he said, practically on his deathbed, 'Look, I want you to go ahead and do Angela's Beethoven,' which I find very moving. It's not easy to get somebody to take on a Beethoven cycle these days because God knows we have enough of them [laughs]."

While Bach and Beethoven form the backbone of Hewitt's Hyperion catalogue, there's also Ravel, Fauré, Debussy, Messiaen, Schumann, Chopin, Couperin and Chabrier — with more projects in the pipeline. In December, she recorded the first of three double albums comprising Mozart's complete piano sonatas, and she'll continue recording her favourite Scarlatti sonatas, too.

She may not always leap out of bed at the crack of dawn to seize the day, but Hewitt knows the secret to managing her time and energy efficiently. How does she do it? We asked her to share some wisdom on getting the most out of her recording sessions.

She has a great relationship with her producer

Over 28 years, Hewitt has cultivated a close working relationship with Ludger Böckenhoff, who began as the recording engineer on her first Bach albums, and then stepped up when Hewitt's first producer retired. "I credit [Ludger] with inspiring me to always do better when we're in recordings, and he was never easy on me, which is a good thing. We have in fact inspired each other."

Because Böckenhoff lives in Germany, Hewitt does much of her recording there. "In Germany, Ludger knows all the concert halls — although he's still finding new ones," she explained.

Böckenhoff usually installs the recording equipment the day before their recording sessions, and then he and Hewitt need to decide where to position her piano. "Do you put it up on the stage? Do you put it down on the floor if the seats are taken out? Do you take out a few more seats? All those things affect the acoustics, of course."

Next, it's time to begin making music. "I'll start warming up and then we do the [microphone] placement and he'll finally say, 'OK, play some samples and then come in and listen.' So that's what I do and then we discuss and he shows me several different mixes. So, I'm involved practically every step of the way."

She does as much listening as playing during her recording sessions

"A lot of musicians tell me that they really don't like to listen to themselves. They just play and play and play. I'm not that way at all," she reflected. "I really listen and pick up tiny things and then I go out and do it better, differently. I can change very rapidly. And then I do it a third time, and we'll have a version that we say, 'OK, that's really good, that's what we're going for.' And then if there are things to fix, we'll fix them. The way Ludger and I work, he doesn't work that way with anybody else."

They edit as they go

"By the time we're finished the recording [sessions], we've also finished the editing, because [Ludger] is so quick," Hewitt revealed. "The way I work, and knowing exactly what I want and how far I can go and having a good ear, it's very productive and we don't waste any time."

She illustrated with an example: "We'll finish this sonata and have it edited and know that we've got it all. And then, at the end of the second day, I'll take some time to listen to it all the way through, alone by myself while [Ludger] goes out on his bike or something. Or perhaps in the evening, when we're back home over in his studio on the big speakers and I'll see if there's anything else I want to do better. So, as you can see, there's a lot of listening involved. And it also gives you the security of when you finish a recording session, you know that it's absolutely there."

She knows to manage her adrenaline

During the weeks leading up to her recording sessions, Hewitt aims to play the repertoire for an audience.

"I'll probably have some concerts with those pieces, but if not, then I will take every opportunity to play them for friends here at home, get somebody on the sofa. It affects adrenaline, of course, and adrenaline affects how you play. Things that you thought were pretty secure — when you have adrenaline going: whoops! You know? It's just a different thing from when you're on your own and you can stop and fix something."

She remembers to stay inspired

Hewitt knows that pressure is a privilege. "I'm sitting there with a wonderful piano and a good acoustic and with the best people and a great piano tuner. And hopefully I'm ready to do my thing. It's sort of ideal circumstances.

"Ten years from now, I might think, 'Oh, I could have done it this way' or whatever, but at least on that day, I feel that's really the best I could do."

She feeds herself well

Hewitt doesn't underestimate the importance of a good lunch.

"I have a good breakfast, of course. I go out grocery shopping at night, but we all take our lunch with us," she recounted of her most recent recording sessions. "I cooked up lunch. The piano tuner helped a bit. You know, it's very important to have a piano tuner who likes to peel apples and make coffee and tea and wash dishes, or at least put them in the dishwasher [laughs]. It sort of gives us a moment to relax. Lunch is very important, you can't skip on that."