Pupil of Serge Krish, Zbigniew Drzewiecki and Ilona
Kabos and one who has worked with some big names – Beecham, de Sabata,
Kletzki, Carl Orff, Britten and Vaughan Williams among others – Joyce
Hatto has now recorded both Brahms Concertos for Concert Artist/Fidelio.
As indeed she has continued to set down a vast amount of her repertoire
for them in the last decade. Her Brahms is consistent in tone and in
direction. She favours tensile strength at relatively – but certainly
not outrageously – sedate tempi. In the main the opening movement of
the B minor observes those verities of Brahms playing that maintain
weight but keep things moving. It seems like a slow, sonorous introduction
under the direction of René Köhler but in fact the movement
as a whole doesn’t sag even though it takes 18.40 (Barenboim with Barbirolli
was half a minute slower, Rubinstein and Krips nearly two minutes quicker
and Gilels and Jochum three-quarters of a minute quicker). I felt however
that the chordal flourishes didn’t really ring out as decisively as
they might; at 15.20 she doesn’t sound heroic enough and there were
moments when the sense of inevitable tension this movement should generate
was in danger of being breached. Her tempo for the Allegro appassionato
is conventional and apposite – she points figures with acumen and in
the melting passage that seems to set a seal on pianists’ performances
of this week (Horowitz brutal, Gilels melting, for example) Hatto charts
a middle course. She offers rubato and phrase pointing at a forwardly
moving tempo. The (unnamed) cello soloist in the Andante is restrained
but expressively contoured. How delightfully Hatto relishes the chamber
intimacies that develop in this movement, dancing and entwining around
the cello’s figures with affection and chamber delicacy. She and Köhler
are excellent at the lightening of tone in the finale, Hatto springing
her rhythm with intelligence though I felt all concerned could have
done something to mitigate the sense of (relative) inconclusiveness
at the very end of the work. I didn’t feel they should have engaged
in false heroics but this is a big work and it needs a commensurately
big profile.
The disc is concluded with Brahms’ penultimate works
for solo piano, the six Klavierstücke Op 118. These are in general
most intelligently played; she doesn’t linger unnecessarily, as for
example in the A major Intermezzo – no overly dainty playing either;
her goal is architectural and tonal and to this extent she can be affecting.
The F minor Intermezzo is finely dramatic, strong and full of character
as well.
Jonathan Woolf
see also
JOYCE
HATTO -
A Pianist of Extraordinary Personality and Promise:
Comment and Interview by Burnett James
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