MusicWeb International Obituary
JOYCE
HATTO (1928-2006)
With the death of the
veteran pianist Joyce Hatto, at her
home in Royston late into the evening
of Thursday 29 June, following a thirty-six
year battle with cancer, an era comes
to an end in British music.
Joyce, born in 1928,
grew up in North West London, and, rather
than go down the traditional Academy/College
route of her peers, studied music privately.
For her models she took Rachmaninov
and Mark Hambourg. And for her teacher
the Russian-Jewish émigré
Serge Krish, a sometime pupil of Busoni
in Berlin - but thought of by the British
Establishment as an essentially ‘light
music’ man, more in touch with Tauber’s
Schubert than Schnabel’s. Under the
influence of Krish she developed her
passion for Bach, Beethoven and Liszt.
And through him gained admittance into
the London ‘White Russian’ circle. ‘I
became friendly with Benno Moiseiwitsch
and I was made very welcome in that
family and the whole group of quite
exceptional musicians who surrounded
it’.
Following the war she
went to Ilona Kabos and Zbigniew Drzewiecki
(in Warsaw). Took advice from Cortot,
Haskil and Richter. And sought insight
from Boulanger, Hindemith and Seiber.
Cortot left a particular impression.
‘To him being a musician meant making
music, communicating music, and bringing
the composer and his music to life.’
During the 1950s she
did her bit for the British scene (promoting
Bax, Bliss and Rawsthorne among others),
as well as establishing a reputation
as a Liszt and Chopin player - her marathons
including the first public account of
the complete Beethoven-Liszt symphony
transcriptions. Appraising her work,
the Chopin scholar Arthur Hedley recalled
of one venture:
‘Joyce
Hatto […] is unusual, rather unique
among English pianists, in understanding
the darker side of the composer. She
does not strive for pretty effects and
her projection of Chopin as a "big"
composer sets her aside from most of
her contemporaries. Her often quite
astonishingly ample technique always
allows her additional scope in conveying
her interpretive views. It is a considerable
achievement of will that she never allows
her own forceful personality to intrude
on that of the composer.’
Up to 1979, when deteriorating
health (and an un-gallant critic) forced
her retirement from the public stage,
Joyce devoted herself to recitals at
the Wigmore Hall and South Bank Centre,
international touring, and private teaching.
Her trips abroad, of which she had fond
memories, took her especially to the
Iron Curtain countries (including the
Soviet Union) and Scandinavia – critics
admiring not only her facility, musicality
and large-scale thinking but also her
‘ability to coax so many different sounds
from her instrument’.
Diagnosed with ovarian
cancer in the spring of 1970 (at the
time of her Abbey Road taping of Bax’s
Symphonic Variations with Vernon Handley
and the Guildford Philharmonic), Joyce
spent the final third of her life oscillating
between recovery, relapse and recording,
battling to the end, refusing to accept
defeat. The CDs she released on the
Concert Artist label (founded in 1952
by her husband and producer, William
Barrington-Coupe) - over a hundred since
1989 - bear witness to superhuman energy
and diversity of repertory. Bach’s Forty
Eight. The complete sonatas of Haydn,
Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Prokofiev.
Cycles of solo Chopin, Schumann, Brahms
and Rachmaninov. The Chopin-Godowsky
Studies. Hindemith’s Ludus tonalis.
The concertos of Beethoven, Chopin,
Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Saint-Saëns
and Rachmaninov. Bax’s Symphonic Variations
with Vernon Handley and the Guildford
Philharmonic. Some wonderful Scarlatti.
All conveyed with integrity, fine taste,
and high definition polish. Exceptional
tonal quality, shaping a Classical line,
elegant phrase endings, knowing how
to place and time a Romantic climax
were the hallmarks of Joyce’s pianism.
Along with some of the most beautiful
trills and ornaments in the annals of
recording. Not all she committed to
tape or hard disk has yet been mastered
and some works she simply never got
round to, obstructed by either lack
of funding or publishers unwilling to
do favours. Vaughan Williams’s Piano
Concerto, for instance. No matter. There’s
enough - the Indian Summer of an artist
on a mission to bequeath everything
within her allocated time. Close to
the end, 8 June, William wrote: ‘She
is desperate to make one final visit
to the studio (probably over the weekend)
to re-do some of the Songs without
Words, some late Liszt, and a section
of Beethoven’s Op 81a. She will have
to play from a wheelchair as she really
can’t walk now’. The only time Joyce
saw one of her girlhood heroes – Hambourg
- he similarly had come to be in a wheelchair
– which didn’t prevent him, she told
Burnett James in 1973, from tackling
a ‘magnificent’ Schubert’s Wanderer
Fantasy and the Chopin ballades. I wonder
if the memory returned to haunt her
that last weekend before the microphones.
The tragedy of Joyce’s
career was that so many for so long
failed, or refused, to credit her achievement.
In her youth she may have appeared with
Sabata, Beecham, Kletzki, Martinon and
others. At nineteen she may have been
the London Philharmonic’s rehearsal
pianist for Furtwängler’s post-war
Beethoven Nine at the Royal Albert Hall
(25 March 1948). And Neville Cardus
may have called her ‘a British pianist
to challenge the German supremacy in
Beethoven and Brahms’. But she was not
to become a BBC ‘star’ (‘never asked
to perform for them once,’ we’re told).
No recording moguls took her up. The
Establishment looked away. The London
orchestras cold-shouldered her. The
media remained indifferent or cynical.
She said it didn’t matter, the music
business was ‘a jungle’ anyway – but
the hurt ran deep.
Not until the renaissance
of her very last years was this tide
of dismissal/negative feeling to be
checked – for which she had to thank
online exposure, a generation of open-minded
pianophiles, and a landmark appraisal
in 2004 from Frank Siebert in the German
magazine Fono Forum: ‘she
makes music without imposed superlatives’.
In the wake of Jeremy
Nicholas’s coverage in Gramophone
and International Piano at the
beginning of 2006, BBC Radio 3’s CD
Review broadcast an appreciation
by Andrew McGregor. After listening
to Beethoven Op 109, he said, he just
‘had to hear more: such technical
ease, musical certainty and instinctive,
unfussy rubato, never mind the
tonal quality and unhurried authority’.
Among the tracks he featured was the
finale of the Tchaikovsky B flat minor
Concerto, made with René Köhler
in 1997. ‘Undeniably impressive […]
that characterful musical personality,
that’s as much the composer’s as Hatto’s,
it seems to me… I suspect the authority
that comes across in so much of this
playing stems from an essential musical
humility … and […] rock-solid technical
foundation.’ ‘It would be hard not to
be interested in Joyce Hatto’s story,’
he reflected, ‘but her recordings speak
for themselves. It does sound as though
we have been missing out on a major
British pianist’ (8 April 2006).
It’s a view shared
by various of her colleagues. ‘I suppose
what I am attracted to is the simplicity
and wisdom of her approach, plus a Gallic
restraint in pedalling and sentiment,’
admires James Lisney. ‘A refreshing
change from the style of playing much
lauded today.
There is a really astonishing
story in her playing
[…] the technical honesty is
a wonder to hear.’
Her near-contemporary,
Ivan Davis of the University of Miami
– in his day student and friend of Horowitz
- thinks of her as the British ‘national
treasure’ of an era. ‘Her legacy is
monumental […] I know of no pianist
in the world who is her superior musically
or technically. I think she gives one
an audio blueprint of the score-never
changing the composer’s instructions
but setting them forth though her personal
vision – both poetic and passionate.’
He lists among his ‘many favourites
CDs’ the ‘daredevil’ Mephisto Waltz,
the ‘darkly dramatic’ Chasse-neige
from the Liszt Transcendentals and
the ‘small’ Schubert A major Sonata,
with its ‘sublime simplicity’. As for
the 2003 75th anniversary
remake of the Chopin Études,
they set in his opinion ‘probably the
new standard’. ‘I think she will have
extraordinary posthumous acclaim.’
On the strength of
just a single Concert Artist sampler
[CACD 92302], the American composer,
pianist and critic Jed Distler values
her as ‘one of the greatest, most consistently
satisfying pianists in history’.
And, as we write, a
posting on the Yahoo Pianophiles group
by Donald Manildi, Curator of the International
Piano Archives at Maryland, confirms
that of the 60 or so CDs he’s auditioned
so far, he has, ‘with only one or two
exceptions,’ ‘yet to encounter one […]
that is less than outstanding’. Among
those he thinks ‘especially remarkable’
are Beethoven’s Appassionata,
the Liszt Transcendentals and
Paganini Études, the Chopin
Études (later version)
and Préludes , Schumann’s
Toccata and Davidsbündlertänze,
the Rachmaninov Preludes, Brahms’s Handel
and Paganini Variations, and
‘all’ the Mozart and Prokofiev sonatas
(3 July 2006).
In old age a slight,
drawn figure of girlish voice and impeccable
courtesies, pianistically the great-grand-daughter
of Liszt and grand-daughter of Busoni
and Paderewski, poetically the niece
of Rachmaninov and Hambourg, Joyce Hatto
was an artist of strong opinions and
self-belief, a lady who bore life’s
kicks, the rumour-mongering and hate
mail, with noble fortitude. Urgeist
before Urtext, spirit before
letter, composer before editor or performer,
was her grail. ‘Hatto doesn’t matter,
Mozart does, Beethoven does’.
‘Forget Hatto, remember Bach’.
Never mind about the limelight, get
the message across, ‘draw’ people in,
‘play what the composer has taken so
much trouble to write down’. ‘What it
really takes to be a pianist,’ she believed,
‘is courage, character, and the capacity
to work. As interpreters, we are not
important; we are just vehicles. Our
job is to communicate the spiritual
content of life as it is presented in
the music. Nothing belongs to us; all
you can do is pass it along. That’s
the way it is.’
Ateş Orga
Joyce Hatto.
Born London 5 September 1928. Married
8 September
1956 William Barrington-Coupe.
Died Royston, Hertfordshire 29 June
2006.
Online Reading
Burnett
James [1973], ‘Joyce Hatto - A Pianist
of Extraordinary Personality and Promise’,
MusicWeb
International, 3 March 2003
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Mar03/Hatto.htms
Richard
Dyer [2005], ‘A hidden jewel comes to
light’, Boston Globe, 21 August
2005
http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2005/08/21/after_recording_119_cds_a_hidden_jewel_comes_to_light/?page=1
Ateş
Orga [2006], ‘Joyce Hatto: The Artist,
The Recordings’, MusicWeb
International,
30 January 2006
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Jan06/Hatto_Orga_1.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Jan06/Hatto2_recordings.htm
The
concert Artist catalogue.http://www.musicweb-international.com/Concert_Artist/Index.htm
Items within the catalogue are linked
to MusicWeb International reviews of
the recordings..
