Of
Canadian Polish descent, Janina
Fialkowska was born in Montréal
in 1951. Her teachers included Yvonne
Lefébure and she became a protégé
of Artur Rubinstein in 1974. In 2002
her considerable international career
looked in doubt, as cancer was diagnosed
in her left arm. This was successfully
removed and a muscle-transfer followed
in 2003. She spent the next year playing
the Ravel and Prokofief left-hand concertos
with her right hand – readers who are
not pianists cannot even imagine what
a daunting task this is, since the whole
technical concept of the music has to
be approached upside-down, so to speak.
By 2004 she was ready to resume her
two-handed career. Quite a story.
A story, too, which
may not have been lost on the Royston
fraudsters. The "Mephisto Waltz
no. 1" was one of the first "Hatto"
recordings to attract attention, after
its posting by Fiorentino expert Ernst
Lumpe on a piano forum as evidence of
the extraordinary recordings this "neglected"
pianist had been quietly setting down
over the previous decade and which were
only now being issued. Lumpe’s innocence
over the matter is not in doubt. His
interest in Barrington-Coupe’s Fiorentino
recordings had led him to visit the
Royston couple and to find, as he believed,
friends with kindred musical interests.
As we now know, they rewarded him with
a bundle of false Fiorentinos, but that’s
another story.
Another piano fancier,
Andrys Basten, thought the "Mephisto"
extract sufficiently interesting to
post it on her own site. The rest is
history, but the timing is interesting.
This was between late 2001 and early
2002. Fialkowska’s cancer was diagnosed
later that year. Her heroic comeback
was complete by 2004. In those early
stages of the Hatto bubble the Hatto
curriculum on the CA site suggested,
if anything, that her career was still
continuing, though it was a bit vague
as to where. In 2005 it was "revealed",
through the interview with Richard Dyer,
that she had been compelled to retire
from the public stage in 1976 as a result
of ovarian cancer and had been fighting
it ever since – with the triumphant
results that could be "heard"
on her records.
The Hatto "story"
was actually pieced together from bits
of other people’s stories in much the
same way as was her "discography".
It was early on suggested that Fiorentino’s
remarkable Indian summer after his virtual
disappearance from the scene had been
part of her inspiration. The Fialkowska
story looks like being another, a suggestion
as to how Hatto might make creative
use of the cancer from which she certainly
suffered, if not for as long as she
claimed. Immersed as they were in their
own misfortunes, the fraudster couple
had no scruples about profiteering from
those of others. As I have pointed
out elsewhere, the sad postscript
to Izumi Tateno’s career appears to
have drawn them towards his Debussy.
My primary concern
in requesting this disc was "Venezia
e Napoli", which I reviewed in
the "Hatto" version. Though
I did not hear the Mephisto Waltz
no. 1, I should say this is the
most interesting performance of the
programme. Fialkowska has a quality
which she may have picked up from Rubinstein,
or more likely he recognized in her
something of a kindred spirit. She seems
to be playing, not to impress
or to astonish her audience,
but to delight them. We can sense,
also, her own pleasure in their delight.
Go
to Nojima for a more demonic performance,
while others again have been more elemental.
Somehow Fialkowska makes this seem a
twisted cousin of a Mendelssohnian scherzo.
There’s a rare twinkle in the eye. Whether
this is quite what Liszt wanted I don’t
know, but the performance has a personality
of its own. It’s very special.
This quality is maintained
in the three transcriptions. The
Maiden’s Wish is deliciously turned.
There is no attempt to make Hark,
Hark, the Lark sound like Schubert
but one can imagine Liszt delighting
the ladies with this outrageous send-up.
Schubert can just about take this. Widmung
is really an appalling piece of
bad taste, but Fialkowska’s sleight
of hand makes it worth an occasional
hearing.
Elsewhere I had some
doubts. In Venezia e Napoli the
Gondoliera is elegant but a bit
drawing-roomy; the end is beautifully
achieved. The Canzone deals a
little politely with Liszt’s yards of
gloom and, whatever I thought before,
this time I thought the Tarantella
too snatched in phrasing, too far
from the spirit of the dance.
Of the three Transcendental
Studies, though, Feux Follets
has much of the poise I missed in
the Tarantella. The pianism isn’t quite
as mind-boggling as Nojima’s, and again
she tends to snatch at phrases in sudden
forte outbursts, but it’s still a pretty
fine display.
Chasse-neige makes
a quite extraordinary contrast with
Lászlo Simon’s much-admired
performance. In Fialkowska’s hands
the piece seems like an inflated Mendelssohn
Song Without Words – a bombastic drawing-room
piece. Simon is slower, but surely out
of conviction, not caution. He draws
massive, elemental forces from the piece,
revealing it to be great music, looking
ahead to Sibelius. Similarly, in Ricordanza
Fialkowska is often poetic in detail
but loses sight of the whole. Simon’s
structural command ensures that the
piece does not sound any longer than
it need do.
On the other hand,
I almost wholly enjoyed Fialkowska’s
Petrarch Sonnet no. 123. The
ending is particularly ravishing. I
only query Fialkowska’s tendency to
tear away the moment an accelerando
heaves into view. But I would add this
to the list of Fialkowska performances
I am glad to have and will wish to hear
again.
On this evidence Fialkowska
is, or was in 1990, an engaging player
with slightly shallow manners suited
more to the salon than to the concert
hall. She would probably have been an
ideal interpreter of Sydney Smith, Joseph
Ascher and the like. However, it would
be unfair to make this judgement without
hearing her in sonatas and concertos
and a range of other composers. Even
if it were confirmed, she is a pianist
with a real personality and as such,
a slightly anomalous choice for the
Hatto couple. Reservations apart, I
have become Fialkowska-conscious and
would like to hear some of her more
recent work.
Hattification
produced no great changes. There is
no time-stretching. The original delicate
sound picture is made to sound bigger
and boomier, to the detriment of the
Gondoliera but to the possible advantage
of the Canzone. Differences in the Tarantella
were less marked.
Those following up
the Hatto aspect should read this review
in tandem with that of the Dalberto
disc which provided the bulk of
the second Diary of a Pilgrimage cycle.
At least one pianist, I believe two,
still has to be identified on this particular
CD. Below are my comments concerning
Venezia e Napoli. As I pointed
out in the Dalberto review, I can claim
some credit for noticing a different
style of playing, even if I attributed
it to the great Hatto’s chameleon-like
range rather than the simple solution.
While reciting the odd mea culpa,
I must say that critics who, such as
myself, are pianists with hands-on experience
of at least some of the repertoire set
down might have been more suspicious
about two things:
1) A variable attitude
to playing with hands exactly together
(Fialkowska usually does), slightly
split (Dalberto does this quite a lot)
and real left-before-right playing,
in the same composer and even – ostensibly
– at the same sessions;
2) A hand-span that
embraces major tenths one day (Dalberto
must have a pretty big hand) and splits
them the next.
Back to more
distant sound for the "Venezia e
Napoli" supplement, yet here, too,
something is different. It stems,
I think, from Hatto’s realisation
that, while the "Années de
pèlerinage" volume shows
Liszt at his most deeply musical,
this supplement – based on popular
Italian themes of the day – is more
sheerly music for entertainment.
Whereas in the greater pieces, the
less we are made aware of the pianism
at stake the better, here we should
be made to gasp with astonishment
at the pianistic feats. So Hatto
slightly adjusts her aim, and here
too, she does not disappoint. There
is a certain sense of irony here
which would have been out of place
in the preceding pieces.
My one slight
reservation concerns the opening
pages of the "Tarantella". Brilliant
and vivid though they are, is it
not all a shade too hectic actually
to sound like a Tarantella? At this
point I took out a couple of comparisons.
Edith Farnadi (Westminster, long
unavailable) disappointed me in
a similar way (and is cautious in
the closing pages, which Hatto certainly
is not) but Jorge Bolet (Decca)
at a fractionally slower tempo seems
closer to the spirit of the dance.
Having begun
making comparisons I noted that
Hatto is the most magical of all
in the "Gondoliera" – Farnadi is
a little dry, though the close recording
does not help, while Bolet is pleasant
but seemingly uninvolved. In the
cadenza passages Farnadi and Bolet
make us hear notes while Hatto,
playing them faster, makes us hear
magic. Bolet, on the other hand,
finds a tragic note (at a slower
tempo) in the "Canzone" which I
found very impressive; Farnadi and
and Hatto are more overtly passionate.
While I have noted my preference
for Bolet at the start of the "Tarantella",
Hatto yields nothing to him in the
"Canzona Napolitana" and the closing
pages.
A textual query.
Bolet alone observes, very effectively,
the "Un poco meno Presto ma sempre
con molto brio" (a little less fast
but still with much brio) marking
that appears at two points in the
"Tarantella" – or at least, it is
printed in the Peters Edition edited
by Emile von Sauer that I have in
front of me. Farnadi and Hatto so
deliberately don’t slow down that
I wonder if that marking is inauthentic
and they are aware of the fact?
But, even if this were so, since
the momentary slowing down is so
obviously effective, might not Sauer,
a pupil of Liszt, have added it
on the strength of something he
had heard Liszt do, or which Liszt
had told him to do?
Christopher Howell
Janina Fialkowska (piano) 
