www.concertartistrecordings.com
Though I haven’t had
the opportunity to make a score-by-score
comparison, I get the impression that
these are relatively non-interventionist
transcriptions, aimed at making the
music available to pianists rather than
creating the music anew. The effect
reminded me of two old school companions
who used to amuse themselves by playing
Bach’s organ works as piano duets, the
upper one taking the manuals part as
written, the other assuming the relatively
easy task of playing the pedal part,
doubling it at the octave as required.
Except that here one pianist has to
cope with it all …
And yet, something
new is inevitably created. This has
a quite different sound from Bach-on-the
piano in the sense of playing works
intended for the harpsichord or clavichord
on the piano (the "48", the
Suites, the Goldberg Variations and
so on) without actually altering any
of the notes. Mindful that Bach’s organ
music contains effects of massive grandeur
which the composer knew perfectly well
could never be attempted on the domestic
keyboards, Liszt has enriched the texture
in many places. This is not just a matter
of romantic "thickening up",
which was more of a Busoni speciality,
since the organ itself provides many
more notes than the organist actually
plays. For non-technically expert readers
I will try to explain that even the
most modest instrument, with the full
registration which most of these fugues
seem to require, will provide not just
the note actually played, but that an
octave above (the 4-foot stop), that
an octave and a fifth above (the 2⅔)
and that two octaves above (the 2-foot).
And, while I hope that an organist would
not muddy a Bach texture with a 16-foot
stop on the manuals (which would give
him the same note an octave below) he
might very well add it to the pedals.
In addition, his organ will very likely
have a couple of mixtures offering something
like the note two octaves and a third
higher and two octaves and a seventh
higher.
Obviously, no one pianist,
and probably no two pianists, could
reproduce all this on the piano, and
it would sound absolutely ghastly if
they did, since the extra notes are
not actually perceived by the ear as
such but as extra colours. This is because
they are all notes contained in the
natural harmonic scale, that is to say,
they are already contained in the one
single note, and the colour of that
single note depends on how strong or
how weak these "harmonic partials"
are. This is why the flute, which has
very few harmonic partials, is much
gentler than the oboe, which has a lot.
In one sense, then,
the piano can reproduce the effect
of the organ’s stops – by putting the
pedal down. If you strike the piano’s
middle C firmly with the pedal down,
depress silently a C-chord higher up
the piano and then release the pedal,
you will hear the C-chord sounding (though
not very strongly). This is because
all those other notes are contained
in the original C, and by putting down
the pedal you are leaving the strings
relating to those notes free to vibrate
in sympathy. So some discreet pedalling,
such as Joyce Hatto provides and such
as Liszt surely expected (but which
I venture to imagine Hatto would not
consider suitable for Bach-on-the-piano
taken from harpsichord originals), can
create an illusion of the organ’s grandeur.
Careful pedalling can
also go some way towards compensating
for the fact that organs are normally
placed in churches with longish reverberation
periods (those few churches with a "concert
hall" acoustic are strangely unsatisfactory
since organ music is normally calculated
by the composer with reverberation in
mind), though here we come up against
another of the fundamental differences
between the two instruments, which is
that the organ has a "soft"
attack but sustains the note while the
piano has a "pinging" attack
and the note dies away.
So in the end, we have
here neither Bach-on-the-piano nor a
pianistic illusion of Bach-on-the-organ
but something different, romantically
rich and satisfying as long as you are
not incurably wedded to authentic instruments
and an "authentic" approach.
And yet, Bach is incredibly, wonderfully,
resistant to transcription. Although
this disc is part of Hatto’s ongoing
Liszt cycle, in the end the voice we
hear is Bach’s, and I am sure this is
what Liszt would have wished. Much of
the credit for this must also go to
Hatto since she is able to create a
convincingly full and pianistic sound
while at the same time creating that
sense of inexorable movement, never
pressing the music but never letting
it drag, which seems to be an essential
of Bach interpretation whatever the
instrument used. Once again, then, Joyce
Hatto has found exactly the right style
for the music she is playing. If you
like your Bach full-blooded, and if
you like "big-band" performances
of his orchestral works which nevertheless
remain in touch with the spirit of the
composer (such as, for example, Sir
Adrian Boult’s wonderful set of the
Brandenburgs), then I think you will
get a lot of pleasure out of this. All
the same, I wish I could have heard
Joyce Hatto’s thoughts on the "48"
instead.
The recording is good
though without quite the bloom and three-dimensionality
of the best modern recordings. There
is a generalized booklet note intended
to accompany (I think) three discs;
this sort of cost saving is all very
well if, without it, we wouldn’t have
had the record at all, but I think it
might have been more clearly related
to the single discs – it took me some
time to work out that I hadn’t, in fact,
been sent the wrong insert entirely.
Christopher Howell
Concert
Artist complete catalogue available
from MusicWeb International
Joyce Hatto (piano) 
