Part
1
Complete
list of Joyce hatto recordings available
for purchase through MusicWeb
Joyce
Hatto THE RECORDINGS
‘She makes music without
imposed superlatives’
Frank
Siebert, Fono
Forum, June 2004
©
Vivienne of London 1970
Joyce’s recording career
divides broadly into two periods, the
second comprising the Concert Artist
releases. Of the differences of personality
and person between the two, she says:
‘When I was young,
people told me I had two speeds, quick
and bloody quick.’ [RD] In Warsaw,
and later in London, I had opportunities
to play many times to Zbigniew Drzewiecki
[…] he was always anxious to clean away
any excessive rubato that might
have crept into my playing. For Drzewiecki,
the composer’s text was his bible […]
at this time [late ’50’s, early ’60s],
my playing had [arguably] become excessively
expressive and was in need of correction.’
[JH/Chopin]
Early Ventures
Scanning the British
Library Sound Archive suggests a player
going down the critically-derided Eileen
Joyce/Serge Krish road, mixing favourite
concertos (Rachmaninov Two – in Hamburg
with George Hurst, in those days principal
conductor of the BBC Northern Symphony
Orchestra), lightweight film pot-pourries-cum-pastiche,
and the then dangerously cross-over
jazz ‘decadence’/classical sacrilege
of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue
(with George Byrd – again Hamburg).
Like Sergio Fiorentino, her one-time
stable-companion, she seems happy to
have contented herself for years not
so much with the majors as any budget
label who would offer her a platform,
whatever their provenance or potential
(Society, Delta, That’s Classical, Saga,
Boulevard). With Gilbert Vinter and
the London Variety Theatre Orchestra,
she recorded an LP for Boulevard including
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, Jealous
Lover, A Tale of Two Cities,
Dream of Olwen, Cornish Rhapsody,
Legend of the Glass Mountain,
and Richard Addinsell’s obligatory Warsaw
Concerto – released in 1959. Weightier
material (if still gramophonically low
profile) came from Delta (Mozart’s K
453 with the London Classical Ensemble
under David Littaur). And to some extent
Saga. (Though rumour has it that Saga
destroyed tapes of two Beethoven-Liszt
Symphonies, Nos 8 and 9 – along with
some Fiorentino Bach.) In 1962 she recorded,
abortively, Liszt’s Seven Hungarian
Historical Portraits - which she’d
resurrected in concert in 1958, but
then felt the need to revise in the
light of ‘closer acquaintance with the
original manuscripts and alternative
sketches’ (premiered at the Wigmore,
26 October 1972).
Under the direction
of Joyce’s husband, William Barrington-Coupe
(her unsung producer), Revolution Records
steered her in a more esoteric, up-market
direction, not least with the release
of Bax’s Symphonic Variations which
launched the company in 1970 (RCF 001),
and his First and Fourth Sonatas. Constant
Lambert, too, went into the can. Notwithstanding
such repertory, comparatively little
of the Joyce of those days was to give
any indication of the flood, the phoenix-like
re-invention of herself, to come twenty,
thirty years later – following her withdrawal
from the concert stage and the silence
of the ’80s.
Concert Artist
One of the few post-war
UK independents still in business, ‘a
company run by musicians and music enthusiasts,’
Concert Artist [http://www.concertartistrecordings.com/]
was established by William Barrington-Coupe
in 1952 – ‘with the basic objective
of providing a sounding board for young
British talent […] neglected by the
[…] major record companies who held
sway some fifty years ago […] The small
size of the young label, many distributing
problems, and the open hostility that
confronted the company,’ their publicity
reads, ‘did not prevent it from adopting
a very positive attitude in promoting
unusual repertoire. It scored a number
of notable "firsts" in those
early years […] premiere recordings
of unusual works by Beethoven, Bartók,
Chopin, Elgar, Handel, Liszt, and many
others [finding] their way into […]
record collections [around] the world’.
Befitting a London past working with
Eileen Joyce, Fiorentino and Lazar Berman
- besides joining forces briefly with
the futuristic, sonically pioneering,
finally crazed Holloway Road producer
Joe Meek (1929-67), forming Triumph
Records in January 1960 - Barrington-Coupe
is a man who keeps up with technology.
He may work in the classical industry
– but to his ears (placing him in the
Seymour Solomon ‘I had an ideal sound
in my ear’ tradition: ‘there’s only
one way to do a recording […] produce
it yourself’) a natural, distinctive,
pedigree sound doesn’t necessarily have
to be one classically generated or schooled.
The Cambridge engineer Roger Chatterton,
responsible for Concert Artist’s re-mastering
programme, comes, for instance, from
a touring, gigging background working
with bands and groups in Britain, Europe
and the US. At best such experience
releases a physical dimension and imaginative
aura in Joyce’s recordings freed of
the closed parameters frequently associated
with classical purists.
René Köhler
A survivor of the Holocaust
gone missing in the murky wastelands
and unspoken history of Cold War Europe,
René Köhler (1926-2002)
conducted Joyce’s concerto recordings
during the ’90s, directing two ad-hoc
studio orchestras – the National Philharmonic-Symphony
and the 68-strong Warsaw Philharmonia.
‘Brought up in Weimar,
René was a pupil of Raoul
Koczalski [1884-1948, via his teacher
Mikuli a direct descendent by tutelage
of Chopin]. He was precocious, playing
both Chopin concertos by the age of
ten. In
1936, through Koczalski’s recommendation,
he briefly continued studying music
at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow.
Failing to be awarded a government scholarship,
he moved to Warsaw. In the Polish capital,
unable to join the Conservatoire
because of his Jewish faith, he studied
privately with the pianist Stanisław
Spinalski. In 1940 his left hand was
crushed irreparably by a young German
“officer”, so-called. He survived the
Ghetto but in the summer of 1942 was
deported to Treblinka [one of
around 300,000 "resettled"
over a period of 52 days between July
and September]. Here [or in the vicinity
- one of less than a hundred believed
to have survived] he was found by the
advancing Red Army [circa 1944].
Unimpressed by his mixture of Polish/French
and German-Jewish stock, his Soviet
interrogator sent him on a train heading
East for a labour camp - where he remained
from 1945 until 1970. Given his freedom,
he returned to Warsaw, with the help
of a Russian friend, to try and sort
out his family property. He learnt that
a small-holding, confiscated by the
Nazis in 1940/41, had been allocated
to a German family as part of a "Resettlement"
scheme. Exacting "justice"/revenge/retribution
on the resettled family in 1945 (they
were killed), the new Polish government
then impounded the place, later to form
an integral part of a Communist Party
Commune. René found that the
Polish authorities refused to recognise
the name "Köhler" as
having Polish associations. Their Soviet
counterparts meanwhile denied they’d
ever "captured" or held him
prisoner. The East Germans were not
interested in the case, claiming that
the Köhlers had left the Weimar
area in 1936 of their own "freewill".
In fact they’d fled, an old professor
at the Hochschule (whose son was a Nazi
Party member) having warned them, at
personal risk, that they should leave
Weimar since all Jews were to be rounded
up the following year to be sent East.
Three of the family had already been
murdered. René kept such things
to himself. He never desired any attention
from the media. Physically he was a
mess - probably why he used to add to
his age to account for his appearance.
He died from prostate cancer.’ [WB-C,
adapted]
Instrumentarium
Joyce recalls that
her first proper piano as a child in
the mid-’30s was a Leipzig Blüthner
grand bought by her father. Following
a liking for vintage pre-war instruments
shared with Michelangeli and Zimerman,
her present one, used almost exclusively
on the Concert Artist recordings, is
a 1923 Hamburg Steinway D, Serial No
217355:
‘[…] an elderly
piano but one with a naturally beautiful
sound. Completely restored, it offers
a big sonorous tone without the edgy
clangour and hard-edged sounds of the
modern Steinway with its pressed new-type
frame. Originally it was in the old
HMV Studios in Abbey Road and was used
for classical sessions. Many distinguished
pianists recorded on it. When Abbey
Road decided that a new Steinway was
essential, they decommissioned it. Fortune
shone on us, we followed up some leads,
and discovered it down in Sussex.’
[WB-C]
The Concert Artist Collection
Joyce stopped playing
in public in 1979. Hospitalisation,
near-death encounters, and alternative
therapies followed - to become the pattern
of her existence. She returned to the
studio, 3 January 1989, playing Liszt.
Since then she has maintained an annual
recording schedule, reaching a peak
of intensity in 1997-99. No discernible
pattern or progression of repertory
is apparent. Rather a mêlée
of works, of stark emotional juxtapositions,
of dramatically differing linguistic,
spiritual and style states seemingly
as the mood and impulse takes her, of
projects begun, taken up again, or completed.
In the five days between 4th
and 8th January 1998, for
example, she ranged from Chopin (four
ballades) and Beethoven (Hammerklavier)
to Prokofiev; in the corresponding period
the following year, 3rd-7th,
from Saint-Saëns (Fourth Piano
Concerto), late Beethoven, Mendelssohn
(the two piano concertos [CACD-9070-2]),
Rachmaninov (B flat minor Sonata [CACD
9079-2]) and Schumann to Schubert (last
sonata) and Liszt, and back again to
Beethoven (middle period sonatas). Prodigious.
Marathon feats: the
Hatto hallmark. As Cortot could do Chopin’s
Préludes and two books
of studies at a sitting, so she could
do a Chopin recital tour playing 26
dates in 34 days (1958-59). Or all the
Field nocturnes before tea, and Chopin’s
after dinner (1953). Assuming correct
documentation, five of her studio visits
strike me in particular (changes of
sound or microphone position between
works notwithstanding), Joyce ostensibly
doing in a day what others would need
two or three for. Contemplate the magnitude,
the intellectual grasp, the aesthetic
response, the sheer pianistic stamina
and concentration required:
6, 7 January 1995
Liszt Italian Operatic Transcriptions,
including Hexaméron,
Niobe,
Norma
and Sonnambula [CACD
91112, 91122] Four late Mozart
sonatas,
K 533/494,
545, 570, 576 [CACD 9055-2
4 January 1998 Chopin
B minor Sonata [CACD 9043-2].
Beethoven Hammerklavier
[CACD 8009-2]
14 October 1998 Schubert
Sonatas in A minor, C minor, D 845,
958 [CACD 9064-2]
16 March 1999 Mussorgsky Pictures
at an Exhibition [CACD 9129-2].
Balakirev Islamey [CACD
9195-2]
5 September
2003 Chopin Op 10 Études
– a 75th birthday
fest in the middle of
Chopin-Godowsky
sessions [CACD 9147-2, 9148-2]
- impossible, many
cynics would uphold.
Joyce comes from the
tail-end of a generation (the 78 rpm
one-takers) for whom preparing meticulously
for a recording was increasingly the
norm. Broadcasting-style, allow yourself
a couple of complete takes, the odd
patch; expect to get the right result
(note accuracy, interpretative overview)
in the minimum of time; don’t assume
endless hours on tap. The greater the
luxury of time, the greater the chance
to fuss over passing imbalances or imperfections,
to stultify a sense of performance.
This is not Joyce’s way. From the beginning
she was a rapid learner, mindful of
the need to get style, notes and logistics
right as a first priority. Working on
their Rhapsody in Blue recording,
George Byrd remembers how ‘very impressed’
he was with her eagerness to explore
with [him] the special American style
of the work of George Gershwin, and
her quickness in integrating these elements
into her playing - we had only a few
sessions. The results of our collaboration
were a rewarding experience.’ [GB] From
the track-listings of her CDs, most
works or cycles are finished at a sitting
or during a run of consecutive sessions/days.
Occasionally though she will set aside
a project to be continued or completed
at a later date. Prokofiev’s War
Sonatas, for instance, were not to be
finally tidied-up until six years after
they were first tackled. The Liszt Sonata/Rhapsodie
espagnople album, begun in 1989,
only reached completion in 1999 [CACD
9067-2]; the Transcendental Studies,
started in 1990, in 2001 [CACD 9084-2].
Maintaining consistency of idea and
interpretation over a lengthy period,
with a sound envelope to match, doesn’t
seem to pose a problem.
Assessing most pianists,
the critical instinct is to refer to
others, to make judgmental comparisons
- invidious as the process is. With
Joyce I find myself rarely tempted to
so do. Her authority is her own. Even
when some of her decisions, her occasionally
urgencies, are not to my taste, there’s
a rightness, an honesty,
to her recorded playing, that compels
of its own. I feel in safe hands, I
know her pianism won’t let down the
composer, or her sense of occasion the
listener. Tone, phrasing, projection.
Articulation, pedalling, dynamics. Style,
short-term shaping, long-term architecture.
The ability to speak in music - eloquently,
rhetorically, passionately, murmuringly.
Such are the parameters she has honed
to become the heart of her art. Her
purling professionalism, the glitter
of her cadenza and fioritura,
the tenderness of her quiet loving,
her fearlessness of emotional display,
remind me of the old-time Slav romantics,
the great musicians, who shaped my values
as a student.
©
Vivienne of London 1970
A Personal Selection
ALBENIZ Iberia. CACD
9120-2
3
January, 5 January 2003. Concert Artist
Studios, Cambridge. Review
William Hedley
Like the later Debussy
Préludes, Iberia
tests a pianist’s technique,
imagination and dynamic resources. Joyce
is no exception in finding it hard to
grade her range from fffff
to ppppp (El Corpus
en Sevilla) – de Larrocha comes
no way near – but she gets to the heart
of the music, its evocacíon
and mercurialism, better than most,
even if her breathing and nuancing is
different from the Spanish school. The
bright passages glitter with hard heat,
the languorous hold-backs, the voice-breaking
triplet turns, the sensual basses, the
double-octave-spanned ‘Andalusian’ unisons,
recline in dusky coolness, Moorish scents
on the wind. Gypsies, workers, dancers,
drinkers, singers, ardent lovers, clattering
courtyards, stories behind closed shutters.
I am reminded of Laurie Lee’s Spain.
Playing to her strengths, Joyce thrives
on the plentiful pedal (and non-pedal)
markings. The contrasts of tight rhythm
and flexible rubato, the sudden
accents and chest-voice cante hondo
melodies, the guitar and high percussion
colouring, the bouncing staccati,
the mood changes, are well integrated.
And though she shies from indulging
the composer’s caesuras and die-aways,
she makes good sense of his many swellings
and contractions of time. Only in trying
to make some of his repetitions of theme
and episode interesting – de Larrocha’s
sphere - may she be found sporadically
wanting.
BAX Symphonic Variations
in E. Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra/Vernon
Handley.
CACD 9021-2
ADD
3 May 1970. EMI Abbey
Road.
Master of the King’s
Music, Bax was Joyce’s musical passion
in her teens and early twenties. Knowing
his romantic weakness for pretty young
women, perhaps she was his too. Between
them, however, stood the protective,
possessive Harriet Cohen. James says
as much in the opening paragraphs of
his interview - detailing circumstances
some time between 1950 (when Joyce acquired
a photocopy of the original manuscript
of the Variations from the publishers,
Chappell, with corrections in Bax’s
hand) and 1953 (the year of his death).
‘It was Sir Arnold
Bax who first brought Joyce Hatto to
my more active attention. I had seen
the name in the concert columns but
it did not register until I found myself
in the Nags Head, Holloway, supping
with Arnold after attending a rehearsal
of one of his orchestral works by the
Modern Symphony Orchestra at the Northern
Polytechnic […] my ears were kindled
when Arnold imparted that Joyce Hatto
was to tackle his Symphonic Variations
with the Modern Symphony. Sir Arnold
was positively gleeful that Miss Hatto
had actually asked to play his mammoth
creation and not cajoled into it by
his publishers. This had obviously endeared
the young pianist to the composer from
the off. He confided astonishment that,
when playing the piece through to him
in the Blüthner Studios [Wigmore
Street], she could not only play the
quite horrendously difficult piano part
but actually understood it […] Arnold
was delighted that the pianist had eschewed
the simplified version that he had prepared
for Harriet Cohen and had reverted to
his original conception […]
It was then a strange
coincidence that three days later I
should receive a ticket and a leaflet
announcing a recital given under the
auspices of the [recently founded] Liszt
Society. Now a Liszt Recital was a rarity.
For a pianist to offer the Twelve
Transcendental Études and
to precede these by the composer’s earlier
Twelve Études Op 1 seemed
almost foolhardy. The coincidence was
that it should be the same Joyce Hatto
to perform this feat. This was a Lisztian
event not to be missed. After the recital
I was introduced to this young woman
who had so charmed Sir Arnold. I congratulated
her on her programme and chatted about
the several late pieces she played as
unusually interesting encores [collected
in Vol 1 of the Liszt Society publications,
1951]. Of course, I had to mention that
I was looking forward immensely to her
playing the Bax Symphonic Variations.
There was a definite tremble on her
lower lip and I realised that this was
a sore subject. I could only glean that
the performance had been cancelled as
some "strange circumstances"
had arisen. No additional explanation
was offered and I did not to press her
further […] the journalist in me, as
much as my disappointment. […] induced
me to telephone Sir Arnold the very
next morning. I immediately reported
my conversation with Joyce Hatto and
asked him what the "strange circumstances"
could be. "Harriet" was the
only word spoken and the line went dead.
I should have guessed at once that Harriet
Cohen figured in these "strange
circumstances" as her possessiveness
with any music, composer, or musician
who happened to cross her path was known.’
[BJ]
Charting a chain of
mystic experiences from Youth: ‘Restless
and Tumultuous’, through Strife and
Enchantment, to Triumph: ‘Glowing and
Passionate’, the Symphonic Variations
were written for Cohen, who gave the
premiere with Henry Wood at the Queen’s
Hall, 23 November 1920. Joyce’s landmark
public performance with the Guildford
Philharmonic and ‘Tod’ Handley, at the
Civic Hall, Guildford, Saturday 2 May
1970, was judged the first complete
account of the work in fifty years.
That it had to take place after
Harriet’s death was because ‘Harriet
[had been] determined to block any performance’
[JH/Bax]. Justifying Sorabji’s early
faith in the piece – ‘the finest work
for piano and orchestra ever written
by an Englishman’ (Around Music,
1932) - the recording, enthusiastic
and pianistically brave, proved a pioneering
two-and-a-half-session 46-minute trail-blazer.
Concert Artist’s 2003 reissue digitally
restores and re-edits the original analogue
master. That it leaves un-rectified
the ensemble/blending problems of a
1970 home-counties week-end orchestra
in rehearse-and-record mode - despite
the experience of William Armon leading,
two prior concert rehearsals, and section
leaders/rank-and-file members drawn
largely from the main London orchestras
- scarcely matters. As a turning-point
in Joyce’s life, her ‘greatest ambition’,
throwing down the gauntlet to the BBC/Glock
camp and the British anti-tonalists
of the ’60s and ’70s, helping, Lyrita-style,
to blaze the trail for the Chandos/Hyperion
‘English’ phenomenon to come, this is
a historic CD of significance.
BEETHOVEN Sonatas Opp
109, 110, 111. CACD 8010-2
18
September 1994; 3 January 1999. Concert
Artist Studios, Cambridge.
‘Unconventional, experimental’
music of’ ‘lofty spirituality’ peopled
by ‘many different characters’ was Hugo
Leichtentritt’s postcard landscape of
Beethoven’s late sonatas. Ranging ‘from
inferno to paradiso,’
he told Harvard audiences in the thirties
(Music, History, and Ideas),
‘their magnificent cosmic visions (Opp
106, 109, 111) have passed beyond the
appassionato and the Titanic
phases into metaphysical depths, mystic
regions of a world beyond, [while] intermezzi
of incomparable lyric beauty and intimacy
of utterance (Opp 81a, 90, 101, 110)
tinged with melancholy sing of the enchanting
loveliness of the terrestrial world.’
Op 111, decreed Thomas Mann (Doktor
Faustus), ‘brought’ the (classical)
sonata as a form to an ‘end’ – ‘it had
fulfilled its destiny, reached its goal,
beyond which there was no going’. Pondering,
manifesting such truths, Joyce’s Beethoven
cycle is a vital document. Not to devalue
her Bach, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninov
and Prokofiev, I wonder if it may not
turn out to be her most lasting achievement.
The late sonatas - in the past a measure
of maturity and greatness, today increasingly
a hunting ground of the young - produce
a typically direct response from her.
She lets them speak on their own terms.
Without to-do, she draws our attention
to the fact that in Op 109 the first
movement (strikingly voiced and integrated)
is ‘vivace’ but ‘ma non troppo’
– ‘noble, calm, but dreamy’ (Czerny);
that the theme of the finale is ‘molto
cantabile’ not ‘andante’ or ‘adagio’.
With Op 110 she lets us know that the
opening movement is no more or less
than ‘moderato cantabile’ – besides
establishing its 3/4 pulse even before
a note has sounded: there’s not a hint
of metric instability about the first
two bars. When subsequently she floats
the demisemiquaver arpeggio ‘roulades’,
she does so aware that to Beethoven’s
disciples they were ‘extremely light,
and by no means brilliant’ (our
italics). That the ten syncopated G
major chords of the fugal finale, bars
132ff, need not be held back
in their (open-ended) crescendo
but can be taken to an anguished una
corda fortissimo goes with
the ‘all out’ nature of her interpretation.
Op 111, travelling its Romantically-charged
journey from dissonance to concord,
black forte G minor diminished-seventh
homelessness to white pianissimo
C major repose, primeval darkness to
celestial light, earthly passion to
heavenly pæan, receives a physical/hallowed
performance of Ninth Symphony/Missa
Solemnis ambience. Not always note-smooth
agreed. But, relatively, how many pianists
play like this? And, since Solomon,
how many British ones?
BEETHOVEN Sonatas Opp
7, 106 (Hammerklavier). CACD
8009-2
2
August 1995; 4 January 1998. Concert
Artist Studios, Cambridge. review
Jonathan Woolf
When I was learning
Op 7 in the early’60s, the semiquavers
of the first movement and the twisting
demisemis of the rondo in particular,
how I wish Joyce’s performance had been
before me. This is a classic traversal,
varyingly brilliant, playful, and dark
(third movement trio). The phrasing
and touch, the gracefully gauged pedalling,
the chamber-like approach to texture,
dots and slurs, is a masterclass. Likewise
the gran espressione of the thee-page
Largo, with its quasi-pizzicato
‘cello’ accompaniment, and its ‘spoken’
delivery of turns and ornaments high
above a sonorous bass. ‘Sing through
your rests’ Plunket Greene used to advise
(quoted by Tovey in the 1931 Associated
Board edition I learnt from). Joyce
does. The Hammerklavier flows
without posturing. Plenty of grit and
tension, a sweeping sense of form and
argument, yet free of angst when
the going gets tough. Joyce takes its
puissance course in her stride, rarely
forcing the issue, preferring leanness
to corpulence. Sustain the Adagio
she does, but by only the slightest
of margins, preferring the music to
breath naturally rather than become
embalmed in some sepulchral tomb. Here
‘the player,’ Czerny says, must call
forth the whole art of performance,
in order that the hearer may not become
fatigued from its unusual length. And
yet […] the highly tragic and melancholic
character of the whole must be faithfully
preserved.’ Managing such balancing
acts is Joyce’s speciality.
BEETHOVEN Sonatas Opp
49, 53 (Waldstein), 57 (Appassionata).
CACD 8007-2
7
January 1999; March 2004. Concert Artist
Studios, Cambridge.
For Joyce it’s critical
that all music - big, small, complex,
simple, greater, lesser – receives complete
attention. Here we have the ‘easy’ Op
49 set given connoisseur treatment,
plumbing unsuspected depths. Not something
tossed-off but seriously considered
- and beautifully rounded tonally. The
Waldstein and Appassionata
she invests with pulsating symphonic
direction. These are big performances,
tightly reined. In the first movement
of the Waldstein she offers,
like Brendel, a simple lesson in how
to maintain tempo and tension: don’t
slow down, don’t introduce spurious
rits, follow, trust, the
composer. The lead-back to the exposition
repeat of the first movement, the point
of recapitulation (following a re-transition
crescendo boiling with Fourth
Symphony energy), the start of the coda,
are superbly controlled. Don’t be fooled
by the apparent matter-of-factness.
It’s all been rigorously thought out.
These passages are far from easy to
bring off. The weighting of the finale
Introduzione is profound, the
paused right-hand sf G
at the end pregnant with suspended suspense.
The rondo itself is a high-German painting
of romantic mist, pedalled scales and
sudden bouncing, clarifying staccati
(bars 55ff et al), fierce ‘Turkish
music’ minore, thrilling toccata,
gliding octave glissandi, and
prestissimo white C major tumult.
A grandioso view of a landscape
one cannot afford to ignore. The Appassionata
is no less imposing, if more flexible
towards matters of tempo shifts and
phrasing/architectural ritardandi.
The first movement holds together compellingly,
with an arresting mix of strong dynamic
contrasts and ‘wet’ and ‘secco’
attack to highlight the formal rhetoric.
Classic refinement, pin-point clarity,
and subtle emphases (for instance not
always stressing down beats, or leaning
off the dynamic) spread a golden veil
across the Andante ‘divisions’.
Wild Furies, roaring winds, envelop
the finale – yet with every branch,
each scattered leaf, naked to the microscope.
Rarely have I come across such discipline,
architectural foreground or clarity
of harmonic underlay. One of the great
Beethoven recordings.
BRAHMS Piano Concertos
Nos 1, 2
National Philharmonic
Symphony Orchestra/René Köhler.
CACD 8001-2
4 March 1992 [No 2];
4 June 1995 [No 1].Concert Artist Studios,
Cambridge;
St Mark’s Church, Croydon.
Reviews:
Concerto 1 Jonathan
Woolf Concerto 2 Jonathan
Woolf Christopher
Howell
Boldly projected, structurally
focussed, Joyce’s Brahms, concerted
or solo, is muscular, handsome more
than beautiful, with a tonal quality
to match, mountain rugged fortissimo
rather than salon refined piano.
She digs deep into the keyboard, Köhler
into the bedrock of his orchestra. Massive
textures, pugilist brass, intense melodic
lines and an upfront dynamic range create
a Heil Deutsche Romantische sound
from an epoch aeons before ‘period’
cleansing came on the scene. The D minor,
fairly ambiently recorded (to the advantage
of the piano if not always the orchestra),
is as sturm und drang
as you want, the whole built on a foundation
of harmonic sign-posting and bass line
progressions, Brahms’s tussle between
classical mind and romantic heart sharply
delineated. The adagio is simple,
direct, manly, finding benediction in
a closing piano cadenza and orchestral
amen of deep spirituality - slower
than Gilels but not burdened by the
fact. The rondo fairly takes off (erring
on the brisk side, Joyce’s view of allegro
non troppo, here and elsewhere,
has a tendency to minimise the ‘non
troppo’ caution), but climaxes in a
thrilling meno mosso impelled
forward by menacingly treading reed
woodwind, focussed drum, and dotted-rhythm
cellos. The deliberated first movement
of the B flat (recorded earlier) favours
the 1972 Gilels re-make direction –
18:40 against his 18:22. Only the andante
is quicker to any significant extent
– by 6.6%, 13:11 against 14:07. The
introduction sets a large stage, the
piano glowing into B flat major resonance,
each note picked and placed. Neither
scherzo nor finale are that preoccupied
with playfulness or humour, going for
serious drama and low-octave thunder
instead. Only in its cello/clarinet/piano
interlacing, does the slow third movement
embrace a softer, warmer vision - Joyce
the chamber musician, happy to listen
and take a back seat when necessary
(cf Tchaikovsky Second Piano
Concerto, slow movement, original version
[CACD 9085-2]). Performances addressed
to northern warrior gods. Necessary
to experience once in a while.
CHOPIN Waltzes Nos
1-20. CACD 9042-2
2
January 1992. Concert Artist Studios,
Cambridge. review
Jonathan Woolf
This collection offers
the standard 15 of most editions, plus
four posthumously published numbers
and a throwaway in F sharp minor attributed
to Chopin, published in 1932, for which
Joyce has long had ‘affection’ even
though it may be spurious. Her playing
is elegantly chiselled, old world perfumes
surrounding the music to create cameos
and sighs not of our age. Fine pianism
and feeling (unfashionable word). Readily
distinctive is the shaping and signing-off
of cadences, one of Joyce’s telling
signatures as a pianist. Luscious tone
and graded left-hand support throughout,
sometimes veritably pizzicato.
Subtle rhythmic buoyancy.
CHOPIN Mazurkas Nos
1-57. Vol I CACD 9116-2; Vol II CACD
9117-2
Begun
15 March 1992. Completed 27 April 1997.
Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge.
reviews Christopher
Howell Jonathan
Woolf
‘Monsieur Cortot’s
involvement with the Chopin Mazurkas
was extraordinarily deep and intensely
personal. His ideas […] struck a deep
chord with me. He felt Chopin had embedded
his own and Poland’s tragedies in each
and every one of them. As I had always
thought, from early childhood, that
life and nature itself was a great canvas
of tragedy, I was a sponge eager to
soak up more of the same from him.’
[JH/Chopin] I’ve returned frequently
to these discs, as evocative a rendering
of elusive music as one could wish for.
Joyce understands their femininity,
yet knows their manliness too. And is
at one with their psyche. ‘Coquetries,
vanities, fantasies, inclinations, elegies,
vague emotions, passions, conquests,
struggles upon which the safety or favours
others depend, all meet in this dance’.
The words of Liszt, prefacing the booklet
notes. Progressively, the playing travels
an extraordinary journey, from early
forthrightness to late intimacy, youthful
flirtation to exile dream, rough gesture
to high finesse. How Joyce inflects
this, taking us with her, is remarkable.
No hot-house contrivances here, no Rubinstein/Malcuzynski
parody - just notes, phrases, syncopated
accents, direct dynamic lighting and
a pinch of rubato drawn from
life and listening. Joyous, poetic,
sad. ‘The collective sorrow and tribal
wrath of a down-trodden nation’. ‘Dances
of the Soul’.
CHOPIN Four Rondos.
Four Ballades. CACD 9038-2
16 June 1992; 6 January
1998. Concert Artists Studios.
review Jonathan
Woolf
Period-infectious rondos,
playful without being gratuitous. The
ballades cohere well, independently
and as a group. That Joyce does not
over-state the introduction of the G
minor, nor over-do the tempo changes,
encapsulates her approach. WA Chislett’s
booklet notes comment that the Third
is ‘often murdered by speed-merchants’.
That is not Joyce’s way. The music unfolds
simply, left largely to speak for itself,
articulated with intelligence and authority,
the ‘I’ factor never to the fore.
‘Cortot’s thoughts
on the actual motivation driving Chopin’s
creative processes were quite different
to those of Arthur Hedley. Arthur Hedley
was quite convinced that Chopin was
quite different to the other composer-pianists
of the Romantic School in that he neither
sought, nor relied, on the stimulation
of the great written, pictorial or sculptural
works of art to feed his creative musical
inspiration. For example, Hedley scorned
the then widely held idea that Chopin
was influenced by the ballades of Mickiewicz
in connection with his own instrumental
ballades, whereas, Alfred Cortot was
quite firm in his belief that Chopin
was completely influenced by Polish
Literature, Art and Culture, [that]
the underlying seam of sadness in his
music was as much due to his personal
unhappiness as to the constant news
of […] sad events [arriving] so regularly
from his native Poland.’ [JH/Chopin]
CHOPIN Piano Concertos
Nos 1, 2
Warsaw Philharmonia
Orchestra/René Köhler. CACD
9082-2
5/6 October 1994. Watford
Town Hall. review
Jonathan Woolf
18-21 October 2005.
Soaked though I may be in the turn and
glitter of these works from the twelve
finalists of the latest Warsaw Chopin
Competition, I find it enlightening
to return to Joyce’s appraisal, an Anglo-Polish
collaboration of many-layered insights
and distinctive personality whatever
the occasional divergencies of opinion.
Playing Chopin she’s a very different
artist, another pianist even, from the
one met in Brahms – still the same force
and clarity of finger-work but more
of a colourist with time to inflect
and declaim phrases. On balance the
E minor Concerto (No 1) comes off best,
a reading of sensitivity and sensibility
to place next to Rubinstein, Pollini
and Gilels. The F minor takes time to
settle, Köhler initially setting
a non-maestoso tempo at variance
with Joyce’s slower ground-pulse. Once
in accord, though, she flourishes, ‘throwing’
the notes and investing the running-passages
with as much melodic significance as
harmonic purpose. The plain-spoken larghetto
may not extract the ultimate poetry
or intensity others have found (to my
mind, interpretatively speaking, the
opening A flat arpeggio, even though
without dynamic marking, is not so much
a foreground marker as a definer, a
setter, of landscape), but that said
there are touches I would not want to
be without (the pianissimo delicatissimo
scale and expiring staccato at
bar 72 of the cadenza, for instance).
In the finale the alternations of folk
terpsichore and concert bravura
captivate as they should, natural air
and space being found to place the notes.
Especially felicitous towards the end
is the clarinet/piano cadence with
echo at bars 309ff (5:06),
a rarely done effect. The phrasing and
tone of the cor de signal at
6:50 defines enchantment.
CHOPIN 24 Études
Opp 10, 25. Trois Nouvelles Études
B 130
2nd recording,
75th Anniversary Edition.
CACD 9243-2
1 (Trois Nouvelles
Études), 5 (Op 10), 8 (Op
25) September 2003. Concert Artists
Studios, Cambridge.
More robust and dynamic
than the 1992 recording [CACD 9035-2],
less studio-managed, the post-production
a touch rough and short-winded around
the edges – but what an extraordinary
feat, poetically strong and frequently
electrifying. Even (huskily) vocal.
Here we have an artist at full throttle,
high on adrenalin, technique gleaming,
commanding a Rolls-Royce of an instrument
firing on all cylinders. The two C sharp
minors – Op 10’s glycerine blaze, Op
25’s infinite nostalgia - sum up the
zeniths of an amazing universe. Others
may be more leggiero in the lighter
numbers (the G flat pair, the F major
from Book I). More concerned with a
polished veneer - reminiscent of the
louder passages in the 2002 Brahms’s
Paganini Variations [CACD 9030-2],
the rush of hormones on the last beat
of bar 48 of the opening C major, cancelling
out the composer’s diminuendo
otherwise observed on Joyce’s earlier
recording, strikes an unexpectedly rude
accent. Few, though, better her glorious
bass lines in the A minor or C minor
from Book II, exceed her G sharp minor
thirds, or equal the deep anguish and
longing she finds in the middle section
of the E minor (same volume). The Trois
Nouvelles Études (in the
order F minor, D flat, A flat [1st
French edition, November 1840]) are
gems. ‘Never wishing to be outdone’
by students or peers, Joyce has had
these pieces in her ‘practicing routine
for over fifty years’. It shows. That,
and memories of Koczalski and Cortot.
‘When I first started
to learn the Chopin Études
as a young girl I […] used the Cortot
Edition exclusively [Paris: circa
1917]and made full use of all the additional
exercises that Monsieur Cortot provided
for mastering and developing the fluency
necessary to master the technical problems.
When, wonderfully, the moment came for
me to play these études to Cortot
himself [London, circa 1947]
I asked him, a little nervously, which
study he would like to hear first. He
picked up my copy, turned to the first
study in C Major, and tapped the page.
Like a greyhound out of the trap I bowled
into my performance. It was, I thought,
much too fast (I was nervous) but it
was only the phrasing and the sound
that occupied him. He accepted that
I had acquired the necessary technical
ability […] and could freely spend the
valuable time at our disposal on the
musical aspects of the pieces. "Encore",
he insisted, and I played the piece
again, a few more comments in my ear
[…] "Encore", and I charged
through those arpeggios once more. After
my fourth effort he sat down at the
second piano and played the whole study
through making comments as he played.
Cortot made the point that the French
word "grande" did not translate
well into English as the term "grande"
did not countenance an absence of elegance.
Faced with his performance, played with
such ease, such a beautiful tone, and
so many tonal variations, one could
only marvel. He constantly illustrated
from the keyboard […] frequently [playing]
illustrations faster, in some instances
much faster, than on his recordings.’
[JH/Chopin]
Cortot’s ‘programme’
for each study Joyce does not reveal.
Nor his ‘romantic "extra-musical"
thoughts’ – beyond saying that they
were ‘tied up more specifically with
his remarks on art and the particular
paintings on which [to an accompaniment
of English tea and walnut cake] he would
expound quite knowledgeably and quite
spontaneously during our expeditions
together to the National Gallery in
London’.
DEBUSSY Twenty Four Préludes.
CACD 9130-2
4 January, 16 March
2001. Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge
review Christopher Howell
These performances
reward for their articulation (legato,
staccato, tenuto especially),
dexterous action, harmonic clarity,
chordal voicing, and regularity of pulse
(according to Marguerite Long, Debussy
premiered Danseuses de Delphes
‘with almost metronomic precision’).
The showering dazzle and distant Marseillaise
of Feux d’artifice … the toreador-presenced
Spanish tableaux … the music-hall
turns … the ‘wooden’ ‘mechanical rigidity’
of Général Lavine,
eccentric (Debussy/Long) … the desolation
of Des pas sur la neige … the
ice-watered grandeur of La Cathédrale
engloutie ‘sound-years’ away … the
esoteric exotic intoxication of La
terrasse des audiences du clair de lune
… the lonely burial urns and calling
souls of Canope (frozen, unbroken
LH tenths). All repay listening. That
Joyce elects to ally Debussy with the
Liszt rather than Chopin tradition,
presenting him on a masculinised canvas
in bold, ‘orchestral’, colours (witness
the gong-like bottom A’s at the end
of the Baudelair inspired "Les
sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air
du soir"), won’t on the other
hand be to everyone’s taste, Gallic
aesthetes especially. Occasionally more
humour, more ‘feeling of musical purity’
(the Pre-Raphaelite La fille aux
cheveux de lin), more smoky ‘half
tint’ lighting (distinguishing mark,
contemporaries maintained, of the composer’s
own playing), would not have gone amiss.
Similarly, in some numbers, less literal
phrasing, more flexibility in moulding
the many cédez arrestments,
and greater attention to the softer
levels of the dynamic spectrum. One
of those recordings to learn from -
forcing you to re-examine the printed
page and evaluate contexts.
LISZT Italian Operatic Transcriptions
Vol II. CACD 91112
6 January 1995 (Hexaméron);
7 January 1995 completed 18 May 2004.
Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge.
Transcription. Liszt’s
word. Speciality of the 19th century
klavier eagles. Sphere of the
Golden Agers. A chance to don many mantles
- the pianist as singer, violinist,
dancer, conductor, organist, orchestra,
chorus, popular gathering. Liszt left
some of Romanticism’s most searing,
starry examples – caressing, singing,
and thundering his instrument into a
glittering, humming Catherine-wheel
of images and illusions. An instrument
that by his death in 1886 had become
a high-tension, high-octane, 88-note
iron-and-wood beast, over-strung and
tri-pedalled, the ‘Lord Byron of Music’
(Anthony Burgess). I’ve lived, loved,
played and written about the Hexaméron
variations ever since Raymond Lewenthal
stormed the world with them in the 1960s.
There are several promising to excellent
recordings available - as well as the
odd one or two, it has to be said, sounding
little more than a sight-read. Joyce’s
account is neither promising nor a sight-read.
She knows this music and its symposium
of composers intimately, and she’s steeped
in the style. Played to the melody rather
than the ornament, living the song rather
than the bravura, here is an
aristocratic, persuasively engineered
version - my only reservation being
the occasional prolongation of certain
fermati, rests or divisions between
sections at the expense of the onward
flow and adrenergic tension you’d get
in a ‘live’ concert situation. But this
is a minor quibble. The byword Norma,
Puritani and Lucia di Lammermoor
‘réminiscences’ find Joyce in
responsive mood, as lyrical or wild,
pianistic or operatic, as the moment
demands. A quality bird’s eye view of
bel canto plunder at its greatest.
LISZT Années
de Pèlerinage II (Italie).
Venezia e Napoli. CACD 9150-2
11/12
March 1996; 1 October 1999. Concert
Artist Studios. review
Christopher Howell
‘When one listens to
[Hatto] one hears luminous tone harnessed
to cast iron technique, a very special
eloquence and sense of characterisation
quite without exaggeration or ostentation.
Added to these rare qualities are the
alluring sonorities she evokes and the
reflective stillness she somehow seems
to compel of the music – as much as
the music compels it of her.’ [Jonathan
Woolf, MusicWeb]. Finely engineered,
this is a special disc, Joyce exploring
Liszt’s programmatic, impressionistic,
futuristic roads to create a gallery
of thoughtful, atmospheric pictures.
True even of the Dante Sonata
– a molten, impassioned, theatrical
experience, terrifying in its manic
moments, yet with time for long passages
of reflection, calm and beauty of tone.
‘Joyce’s reading
of the Dante Sonata is slower
than the modern norm [19 minutes compared
with around 16 to 18]. Busoni felt and
told Krish that it was really to sound
as it was in the hot cavernous depths
of hell where the moans and cries "echoed
out" and reverberated from the bowels
of Lucifer's Kingdom. Joyce is not one
for using the sustaining pedal as a
prop to her interpretation. In this
piece, however, she is less sparing
and takes Liszt at his word, endeavouring
to find the sound the composer wanted
and Busoni tried to teach. In her original
[unsigned] notes she wrote "Liszt
takes us by the hand and leads us down,
down, down into the depths and abyss
of a fearful place...".’
[WB-C]
Pianistically, that’s
exactly what she does. Incandescent.
Venezia e Napoli leads us to
sunnier places. Even so there’s a sadness
and longing in the shadows – a slightly
out-of-tune instrument adding its own
elegiac imagery. The slow maggiore
arias and tears of the Gondoliera,
Canzone (at 2:27) and Tarantella
(2:01), music to test a pianist’s bel
canto, yearn and pause, holding
onto time and life, to unspoken memories.
Joyce’s mastery, her glass-edged poise,
the mirror she looks into, stills the
listener.
LISZT Études
Vol II. CACD 9132-2
12
November 1998, 6 January 1999. Concert
Artist Studios, Cambridge.
The best of Joyce’s
Transcendental Studies [CACD
9084-2] make for compelling listening.
Feux follets, Ricordanza
and Harmonies du soir impress
in particular for their ‘breeding’,
technical finish, and fanciful poetry
(they were coached in the late-’40s
by Moiseiwitsch and Cortot). Correspondingly
fine is this disc, comprising the five
Concert Studies (published 1849, 1863)
and the familiar 1851 re-write of the
Paganini series. The playing
ranges from the mercurial (a stunning
Gnomenreigen, ideally Presto
scherzando) to the achingly poetic
(an Un sospiro reminiscent of
Lamond; the misting aroma of the top
D flat in bar 45 of La leggierezza).
The Paganinis are grand and technically
sweeping. No tempo concession is made
to accommodate the difficulties of the
octaves in No 2. The trills of La
Campanella whir like Levitzki’s,
leading to (aurally) one of the most
convincingly untroubled finishes I know.
No 4 finds the piano alchemised into
a violin, so remarkable is the touch,
dovetailing of hands, and detaché.
Christopher Howell (MusicWeb)
neatly defines the hub of Joyce’s Liszt.
‘With technical nonchalance but a complete
lack of any virtuoso fuss, [she] just
gets on with playing the pieces "straight",
like the good music they are. Whether
she learnt this from some past teacher
or whether her instincts led her this
way I know not, nor does it matter much.
She is in that royal line of Liszt interpreters
who believe this is great music and
is to be played as such. Now, what you
won’t get from Hatto is the sort of
filigree passage-work that makes you
gasp at the sheer crystalline evenness
of it all. Her passage-work is good,
but it is not part of her agenda to
parade its "goodness" as an
end in itself. In other words, if it’s
Liszt the circus-master you’re after,
you won’t get it. But if you have resisted
Liszt because of his showy image, then
these wonderfully musicianly performances
might make you change your mind.’ Absolutely.
MOZART Eighteen Sonatas.
CACD 9051/55-2 (5 discs)
2-3 January 1995
(Nos 1-5); 6-7 January 1995 (Nos
15-18); 16 February 1995 additional
material 3 January 1999 (Nos 10-12);
23-24 February 1995 (Nos 6-8); 17
April 1995 (Nos 9, 13, 14, Fantasy
K 475). Cambridge Artist Studios,
Cambridge.
Reviews Christopher
Howell Vol
1 Vol
2 Vol
3 Vol
4 Vol
5
Richard Dyer has spoken
of ‘an operatic vocality and fluidity’
informing Joyce’s 1995 Mozart cycle.
This set gives unmitigated pleasure,
the ‘ring’ of the piano, each dot and
slur, floating in a memorably warm acoustic.
More often than not one can sense if
a concert performance is going to be
good, bad or indifferent from the way
the first two notes or chords are attacked
and timed rhythmically. So it is here.
The way Joyce sets a phrase on its limpid
journey, how she allows the music to
breathe, argue and relax, the manner
of her slow movements, so expressively
curved and ornamented, can only promise
special experience. She delivers a marvellous
series of characterisations drawn from
opera, ballet, symphony, concerto and
song. French poise, Mannheim galantry,
Viennese graciousness. Civilised speech,
elegant figuration, toying humour. There
is nothing reduced, restrained or ‘period’-precious
about this Mozart. If the music suggests
Beethoven, that’s what you get, gran
espressione, weighty chording, heavy-boned
forte and all. If it conjures
an orchestra, a harmonie, that’s
a cue for an emporium of scarcely-pedalled
touches, voicings and colours. Bold
gestures release big dynamics: Hammerflügel
turned concert grand. Intimacies and
anguish, poetic beauties, moderate the
scale: Steinway turned Stein. Listening
to Joyce’s unfailingly frank pianism,
her gift to let the music ‘happen’,
I find no urgent need to go back to
the scores, happy to sit back and take
delight in the calm perfection and good
taste, the buoyancy of the moment, spread
before me like an 18th century
garden. There’s an abundance of Mozart
sonatas on disc, from the ultra veneered
to the ‘psychotically weird’. Free of
hang-ups, Joyce’s set is one to cherish,
good to have on the shelf alongside
Gieseking and Klien.
PROKOFIEV War
Sonatas Nos 6-8 Opp 82-84. CACD 9122-2
Begun 7 January 1998 (Nos 6, 7); 10
February 1998 (No 8). Completed 3 September
2004.
Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge.
review Jonathan
Woolf
Joyce discussed these
20th century beacons in Moscow
with Richter, who’d given the premiere
of the Seventh in 1943. Here are structurally
cogent, rhythmically tight readings,
rich in imagery and clarity of textural
voicing - rarefied, personally experienced
visions, from insidious marche militaire
to distant basilica bells, painting
an often poignant canvas. The ambient
recording does splendid justice to the
music, repetitive and secco chords
ricocheting off the acoustic, resonant
yet un-pedalled. However competitive
the market-place, from veteran masters
to young bloods winning their spurs,
No 7 is about as good as you’ll get,
a version thrilling and sensitive, magically
hued and toned. Joyce has no time for
the tom-tom percussiveness and spiky
breathlessness many players spuriously
bring to Prokofiev. Rather she seeks
out beauty of sound, length of phrasing,
colour and solitude. The dynamic range
is wide but unexaggerated. Her low B
flat octaves, richly over-toned, thunder
with a gravitas not forgotten
easily, her softly hued upper registers
whisper confessionally.
RACHMANINOV Piano Concertos
1-4, Paganini Rhapsody.
National Philharmonic
Symphony Orchestra/René Köhler.
CACD 9178-2, CACD 9219-2
17 March 1994 [Paganini
Rhapsody], 5 October 1996 [Nos 1,
4]. Watford Town Hall. 29 March
1998 [No 2], 10 July 1998 [No 3].
St Mark’s Church, Croydon.
Reviews Jonathan Woolf Concertos
1&4 Concerto
2 Concerto
3
There are many fine
individual beauties here, not least
the observantly detailed, dare one say
gorgeous, orchestral support, plenty
of air and space (if arguably not always
sufficient ceiling) surrounding the
players. Joyce and René breath
and phrase as one, with shared lines
and a mutual sense of climax. The ensemble
and precision attack, rhythmic pointing,
and clarity of dialogue, is often remarkable.
If the lyric passages stick in the memory
more than the extrovert virtuoso ones
(No 1, finale central episode; the variations
leading up to and including the D flat
eighteenth in the Paganini, freed
of sentimentality in its chiselled remembrance),
maybe it’s because these performances
are rich in period-experienced chances,
heart-on-the-sleeve risks, and ‘dated’
expressive devices (portamento,
for instance). I find it very easy to
live with No 2, relishing the sonorities,
the bigness, the intimacy, the dynamic
finesse (a breathtaking ff>p
at fig 25 of the slow movement), the
precision trills, the way C major is
colouristically and emotionally differentiated
between loving, gently sighing afterglow
(first movement) and knock-out post-Tchaikovsky
glory (finale). No 3 commands impressively
- from the child-like innocence of the
opening … through tumultuous first movement
cadenza (the longer and chordally tougher
of the two Rachmaninov provided) and
expansive, fragile cadenced, scherzo-fleet
intermezzo … to big-boned, arabesque-teasing,
imperiously perorated finale. No one
for a second seems in doubt of their
place in the drama. The Fourth (dedicated
to Medtner), an awkward Cinderella,
repays investigation, Joyce, like Michelangeli,
Demidenko and Marshev, making a strong
emotional and structural defence. Again,
one must admire her conductor. Highly
impressive, always fearless, these recordings,
released in 2002/04, equal or out-strip
much of the current CD competition,
newcomers not least.
RACHMANINOV Études
tableaux Opp 33, 39. CACD 9128-2
15
June 1996, 28 September 1999 (Op 33);
19/20 September (Op 39).
Concert Artist Studios,
Cambridge review
Jonathan Woolf
Form, it’s been said,
is ‘slow’ (to perceive), colour ‘quick’
(to recognise). In these seventeen pieces
Joyce gives us form and colour in equal
doses at equal speed. Spiritually at
home in the atmosphere and melancholy
of Russian music - Rachmaninov’s figurations
lying well under her hands, his sonorities
drawing the best out of her piano -
her command cannot be doubted. Here
is masterly playing in the grand manner,
a fabulous collection of poems and studies,
shining bells (Op 33/7) and sylvan glades
(C minor, Op 33/3, closing C major two-thirds),
bleak individuals and motoric crowds,
funeral marches and old witches’ tales
(Op 39/7, not to be missed). Rhythmically
poised high-speed staccati, full,
weighted, inner-voiced chords, a richly
expansive sound and dynamic field …
space, silence, theatre. The odd missed
note or edit worries me not in the slightest.
This imaginative, unforced CD is prime
reference listening.
RACHMANINOV Twenty
Four Preludes. CACD 9127-2
12 March 1999, 30 December
2001. Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge.
Review
William Hedley
There are no shortage
of Rachmaninov Preludes in the catalogue,
every pianist, like them or not, bringing
their own unmistakeable stamp, technique
and aesthetic conception to the music.
Horowitz, Richter, Weissenberg, Ashkenazy,
Alexeev, Demidenko. The composer himself.
The middling-road/low temperature British,
Lympany to Shelley. Joyce, the name,
likeness, and memory of Rachmaninov
intimately bound up with her life, offers
an alternately brooding, passionate,
tender perspective. She knows all about
voicing chords the Russian way (Moiseiwitsch
legacy?), as well as the importance
to the Rachmaninov style of subsidiary
inner voices and chromatic prisms. And
her rubato is exemplary, not
over-milked but with just the right
amount of lift and pause. Dynamics are
big but not over-theatrical. Focussed
bass end, full of leashed power, given
splendid head in climaxes. Interpretatively,
Joyce is never anything but her self.
Something like the opening C sharp minor
(Op 3 No 2) is delivered freshly minted,
profoundly coloured. Where in the middle
section someone like Demidenko lets
loose rampant demons, she finds malignant
spirits threatening with what they might
do. Among the many jewels of this album,
1, 5, 6, 11, 16, 21, 23 and 24 should
be in everyone’s collection. Haunting,
smoky, fabulous throwbacks to a time
that was.
SCARLATTI Eighteen
Sonatas. CACD 9208-2
23
June, 23 September 1997. Concert Artist
Studios, Cambridge. review
Jonathan Woolf
Listen ‘blind’ to any
Joyce Hatto recording and the inescapable
conclusion would be of a thinker at
the keyboard, a stylist. Along with
her Chopin mazurkas [CACD 9116-2; 9117-2],
I ‘innocent eared’ these Scarlatti sonatas
on a friend in Paris – a music industry
professional and well-known pianophile.
He posed some interesting suggestions,
an artist, he thought, reminding him
by turn of Lipatti, Michelangeli, Pires.
In the refined pianoforte spirit
of Joyce’s 1990/98 Bach Goldberg
[CACD 9068-2], these tracks have classic
qualities, from gentle intimacy to cut-glass
trills, southern arioso to northern
basses, minore moonbeams to maggiore
sunshine. I wouldn’t want to single
out one at the expense of another.
SCHUBERT Three Late
Sonatas D 845, 960, 894
CACD 9064-2; CACD
9066-2; CACD 9065-2;
14
October 1998; 5 January 1999; 5 May
2000. Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge.
Reviews Jonathan Woolf 9064
, 9065
,
9066
Joyce thinks no more
of Schubert in the shadow of Beethoven
than she does Mozart in twin-set and
pearls. She presents him on a Great
C major scale - the piano symphonist
to Beethoven’s symphonic pianist. Big
gestures, tough developments, angry
currents, primary coloured textures.
The A minor, D 845, is a typical example,
so variegated and voiced in its lines
and registers that one can almost hear
an orchestra, a theatre, at play - Biedermeier
solos and ensembles contrasting ‘rough’
Redountensaal tuttis Vienna 1825
vintage; forest horns duskily closing
the andante; shepherd song floating
above alpine valley floors in the scherzo’s
trio; chattering woodwind tumbling over
themselves in the finale. There is nothing
reduced about this playing or the formal
perception of the music. At over 44
minutes Joyce’s very fine G major, D
894 is nearer to Richter’s way (46)
than Brendel’s (37) – but to my mind
holds the argument better, the lyricism
more physical than cerebral. The spacious
expanses and broad harmonic rhythms
of the first movement are finely brought
out, equally the shaping and agogics
of the andante, each phrase corner
and key change prepared and breathed
in its own time and space. High tenderness
turns the trio of the menuetto
into an other-world oasis (magical touch
and pedalling). Of the 1828 trilogy,
the swansong B flat, D 960, cogent and
cohesive discounting some finale breathlessness,
ranks best overall in terms of pianism,
piano sound and recording quality. Falling
between Brendel (37) and Richter (46),
it comes home in 40 minutes. Following
Joyce’s custom, all repeats are taken,
including the first movement exposition.
The landscape is broad, the pauses and
silences long (and never the same),
the andante sostenuto hypnotically
fluid yet static (its A major middle
section a poem of pedalling, legato
melody and staccato accompaniment).
In the scherzo’s trio the jagged displacements
of accent in the left hand are strikingly
emphasised, generating conflicts normally
under-stated. Overall, a wonderful fusion
of lyricism and tension.
Listening to these
performances, to the joys and distresses
of Schubert’s muse, to history’s famous
melodies, I find myself reaching for
Muriel Draper and the last lines of
Music at Midnight. London, Chelsea,
Edith Grove. A house of Beethoven, Chopin,
Schubert, of musicians, dancers and
artists. Late spring 1915, the going-down
of the Lusitania. ‘A matchless
Bechstein’ chosen by M’s lover … Rubinstein,
Arthur.
‘It was time to
go […] I waved […] and walked through
the door, out of 19 Edith Grove […]
I drew a circle around the life I
left there: as it closed, I heard
music. I turned to look. And there
in the door they stood, Ysaÿe,
Barrere, Rubio, Sammons, Warner, Petrie,
and Evans, their instruments miraculously
at hand, playing divinely. I do not
know what they played, but as it carried
me across the [pavement] and into
the waiting cab, I heard from the
open window in the roof of 19A the
splendid chords of the Hammerklavier
Sonata. The golden era was at an end.’
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto*;
GRIEG Piano Concerto;
LITOLFF Concerto Symphonique
No 4 – Scherzo*.
National Philharmonic
Symphony Orchestra/René Köhler.
CACD 9194-2
*1
March 1997; 8/9 February 1999. Concert
Artist Studios, Cambridge. Review:
Jonathan Woolf
Graveyard of so many
pianists and conductors, Schumann’s
Concerto emerges here with a calm, spacious
authority that’s satisfying and convincing.
Cumulatively, the unaffected point-making,
the sweep of orchestral paragraphing
leading into the first movement cadenza,
the cadenza itself, the simply delivered
clarity of the intermezzo (purged
of non-necessities), the classical brilliance
and romantic cliché of the finale,
all make for a performance one wants
to return to, even in an over-crowded
market. Köhler and the NPSO lend
seasoned, distinguished support to the
proceedings. Grandness and characterful
purpose inform the Grieg, a commanding
account powerfully projected. Not for
the first time, one has to admire the
crafting of detail and joins. The pedigree
of orchestral contribution, too, which
makes one hear things anew. No connoisseur
of class pianism will want to miss the
cadenza, its awesome bass-plunging climax,
or the portent of its pauses. Likewise
the quality and articulated shaping
of the slow movement’s piano entry,
a telling barometer of an artist’s sensitivity
and life-experience. For Joyce all the
time in the world seems hers, the notes
suspended and curled, sounded and softened,
to send shivers. The finale she takes
by the reins, not a loose harness in
sight. The F major middle section (trademark
phrased and placed cadences), the proud
crest of the coda with the flattened
seventh G naturals that so caught Liszt’s
imagination, have to be heard. Pianists
come no better than this. Simply thrilling.
Outstandingly conducted, the Litolff
makes a nice old-fashioned encore, of
a breed few dare consort with any more.
Stunningly, idiomatically tossed off.
Rosette standard.
TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto
No 1; SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concerto
No 4. National Philharmonic Symphony
Orchestra/René Köhler. CACD
9086-2
[1]2-3/5 March 1997;
3 January 1999. Concert Artist Studios,
Cambridge.
Reviews: Christopher
Howell, Jonathan
Woolf
Reared, like so many
of her generation, on Hambourg’s playing
of the work in the film The Common
Touch (1941) - and grateful to Solomon
for having ‘given her the impetus to
actually get the music and find out
what it was all about’ [WB-C] - Joyce
learnt the Tchaikovsky B flat minor
with Serge Krish before living it with
the violinist Michael Zacharewitsch
(who’d known Tchaikovsky personally,
and from whom, she says, she ‘learned
much about the Russian idea of performance
and of Tchaikovsky in particular’),
Moiseiwitsch and Yakov Zak (who ‘turned
up the temperature a few degrees’).
Believing that it is ‘not possible to
give an even adequate performance with
a partial run-through with orchestra
and a chat with the conductor,’ she
was never to programme it in England.
To our loss. Her measured Cambridge
re-make is insightful, challenging and
thought provoking. Grand inner strength,
absence of formal hiatus or exaggeration,
and precision octave fusillades impressive
for their clarity and tone quality (minim
122), distinguish the first movement.
The Andantino (will-o’-the-wisp
Prestissimo – dotted crotchet
120-22) duskily remembers another age
of poetry, rubato and touch,
the horn and woodwind dolci at
33ff dreamily shaped and swelled,
the string countermelodies of the reprise
thrown (alla Gavrilov/Kitaenko)
into warmly sonorous relief. Sharing
the Sokolov/Gergiev approach (St Petersburg
1993), Hatto/Köhler usefully validify
the third edition’s Tempo I changes
in the finale second subject (slow orchestral
presentation, quick piano take-up, 56ff).
And, agreeing with von Bülow, she
goes for exultation rather than sentimentality
in the closing molto meno mosso
(crotchet 94). [AO/Tchaikovsky]
Time was when Saint-Saëns
Four was at least as popular as the
Second. Paderewski had it in his repertory,
and Cortot made his Philharmonic Society
début with it at the Queen’s
Hall in1911. Joyce studied the music
with Cortot – in addition to working
from the composer’s original manuscript
in his collection. Showing us today
exactly how to play and characterise
the music (and engineers how to balance
a Romantic sound) this is one of the
all-time great performances, on a par
with Casadesus and Bernstein. Epic,
magnificent.
All releases DDD unless
specified otherwise
THE LEGACY
‘What it really takes
to be a pianist is courage, character,
and the capacity to work. Shakespeare
understood the entire human condition
and so did the great composers.
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.’
Joyce Hatto, August
2005
A well-mannered North
London girl born into the Backhaus-Cortot-Hambourg-Horowitz-Moseiwitsch-Rachmaninov-Rubinstein-Solomon
era. Groomed to believe it was ‘impolite’
to talk about what went on behind closed
doors. Wartime. Private lessons. From
a background when chasing after competition
plaudits was something ‘only’ the Americans
and Soviets did (the 1949 and ’55 Chopin,
the ’52 Queen Elisabeth, would have
been open to her). Concerts, teaching,
touring, marriage. Stamping a domestic
presence. Applauded by Tippett (‘such
imagination, fantasy’), Furtwängler,
Stefan Askenase, Neville Cardus (‘a
British pianist to challenge the German
supremacy in Beethoven and Brahms’).
A handful of early ‘light’ recordings,
a crop of cassette releases, a harvest
of late ‘serious’ CDs. Old age. Wary
of the Establishment, corporation protocol,
hierarchical administration, the Royal
Schools of Music, the press. Cynical
about the BBC and its artist/auditioning
policy. Dubious of the London Four as
orchestral partners conducive or generous
enough with their time to meet her demands.
Content every Sunday evening in the
’50s and ’60s for the likes of Moiseiwitsch,
Cherkassky and Kentner, Malcolm Sargent,
George Weldon and Basil Cameron, to
rehearse-and-play Beethoven, Rachmaninov
and Tchaikovsky at Hochhauser’s Albert
Hall ‘Pops’, but, Iron Curtain concessions
excepted, disinclined to go down such
road herself. A lady of singular views,
brought up on famous friendships and
glimpses of the great. Determined, headstrong,
opinionated. Champion of bad-publicity
composers. Mistress of multi-note extravaganzas.
Happier playing abroad than at home.
A born fighter for whom giving in has
never been an option. Fond of quoting
Muhammad Ali’s ‘Knock me down, and I’ll
get up immediately’. Once at the Queen
Elizabeth Hall - 21 October 1971 - I
recollect her starting the last item
on her programme, Chopin’s Op 53 Polonaise
(substituted for the Polonaise-Fantasie),
but never finishing it. No matter. There
were mitigating circumstances an insertion
in the programme told us, ‘an unfortunate
collision on the motorway’. Charmingly
apologising, she let fly the Military
Polonaise from Op 40 instead. You remember
and admire people for that sort of courage,
more sometimes than for their victories.
Joyce Hatto. A recording
artist like few half-a-century ago could
have imagined. A pianist who from Krish
learnt well the importance of unruffled
sound and ‘finished’ presentation. The
public, he would say, ‘must never feel
that you are riding on the edge of a
precipice. Look happy and sound happy
and work on [your pieces] until your
audience is able to forget the difficulties,
your difficulties’. A consummate
musician commanding an extraordinarily
diverse repertory and range of styles,
steeped in the sovereign traditions
and nostalgia of a Europe before empires
came to an end.
© Ates Orga
St Cecilia’s Day 2005
The
Complete Concert Artist catalogue is
available from MusicWeb International
Principal References
AB
Alan Bunting, correspondence with the
author, 3 December 2005.
AH
Arthur Hedley, Friends of Chopin
Newsletter, October 1958, marking
a recital by JH at 99 Eaton Place
SW1 (formerly the London home of
Mrs Edward John Sartoris née
Adelaide Kemble) commemorating a
concert at this address by Chopin
a hundred years previously: ‘Monsieur
Chopin will give a Matinée
musicale, at No 99, Eaton Place,
on Friday, June 23, to commence
at 3 o'clock. A limited number of
tickets, one guinea each, with full
particulars, at Cramer, Beale &
Co's, 201, Regent Street’ (The
Times, 15 June 1848). Hedley,
Chopin and the Nocturne,
programme notes, 1953. http://www.concertartistrecordings.com/composerofthemonth.htm
AO
Ates Orga, Joyce Hatto interview, Cambridge,
14 February 2005. Correspondence with
the author.
AO/Tchaikovsky Ates Orga, ‘Tchaikovsky’s
First Piano Concerto: a Collector’s
Guide’, Part II,
International Piano, January-February
2004.
BJ Burnett James ‘Joyce Hatto
- A Pianist of Extraordinary Personality
and Promise’,
MusicWeb International, 3 March
2003.
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Mar03/Hatto.htms
GB
George Byrd, correspondence with the
author, 17 November 2005.
HS Humphrey Searle, booklet
annotation, 1952, Liszt Études
Vol II, Concert Artist CACD 9132-2
(1st edition release).
JH/Bax Joyce Hatto, ‘A Personal
Reflection’, Bax Symphonic Variations,
Concert Artist CACD 9021-2.
JH/Chopin Joyce Hatto, booklet
annotation, Chopin Études
75th Anniversary Edition,
Concert Artist CACD 9243-2.
RD Richard Dyer, Joyce Hatto
profile, Boston Globe, 21 August
2005.
WB-C William Barrington-Coupe,
information communicated to the author,
2003-05.
A contributor
to The New Grove, Tom Deacon’s
Great Pianists of the 20th
Century series (Philips) and International
Piano, ATES ORGA was for
some years Lecturer in Music at the
University of Surrey before taking up
an appointment at Istanbul Technical
University in 2000.
As a record
producer he has worked with many pianists
including
Nelly Akopian-Tamarina,
Dmitri Alexeev, Nikolai Demidenko, Pavel
Gililov,
Marc-André
Hamelin, Vladimir Krainev, Piers Lane,
and Nikolai Petrov.
POSTSCRIPT
18-10-07
Part 1 The Artist
Part
2 The Recordings
Joyce Hatto - POSTSCRIPT
‘Dead
men don’t talk.’
William
Barrington-Coupe,
Regent
Street, Cambridge, 24 August 2003
My survey
of Joyce Hatto (1928-2006) went online
thirteen months before ‘Hattogate’ broke
in Gramophone, 15 February 2007.
Her reminiscences, William Barrington-Coupe’s
role, and the ‘1973’ text ascribed to
Burnett
James (‘the
odds are […] that the article is as
bogus as the rest’: Christopher Howell
MusicWeb
Message Board,
21 February), have since been vigorously
debated.
There
are few specifics, skeletal paper-trails
and not a few denials: the Liszt Society
maintains ‘no recollection of contact
with her’ [LS e-mail, 23 February] and
Fiona Searle doesn’t remember her husband
ever mentioning her name [LS e-mail,
8 March])
Against
this background the Hatto story needs
to be re-drawn as a tangle of truths
and negatives, of the dead rising to
glamorise and lend authority, of imaginary
people, make-believe schemes and CDs
that never happened. It’s the tale of
a career that wasn’t and of a
life we may never properly
flesh out.
Add
to this two e-mails from WB-C in as
many hours on 20 August 2006. One said:
‘I am slamming the door tight. Tomorrow
I shall finish destroying all personal
correspondence […] I will never have
any personal correspondence either Joyce’s
or mine left for anyone to pick through.
[…] ALL private material is going through
the shredder now this very minute. Photographs,
wedding photographs, family photographs,
concert programme[s] - everything that
I have sorted out in the past six weeks
that could get my hands on. A small
selection of things have been put aside
by me for MY recollections and these
will eventually be posted up on the
web’;
The
other: ‘I have destroyed all my personal
correspondence (408 letters that Joyce
had saved) and letters from Joyce to
me. They have been shredded and will
be burned with everything else and the
balance of photographs and others papers’.
Mindful
that ‘the sources for a significant
number of CDs and tracks [still] remain
unknown’, ‘it is now widely believed
that all of Joyce Hatto’s CDs [excluding
Bax’s Symphonic Variations] are fakes’
(Farhan Malik) – ‘stolen’, appropriated,
mined or manipulated from the digital/analogue
work of others (77 as of 17 October
2007). ‘The most "jaw-dropping"
scandal ever to hit the "polite"
world of classical music’ (Andrys Basten).
For current
overview and updates see Basten
‘The
Joyce Hatto Log’;
Malik ‘Joyce
Hatto Identifications and Scandal’
(including WAV file image comparisons);
Andrew Rose ‘Joyce Hatto - The
Ultimate Recording Hoax’;
Wikipedia ‘Joyce
Hatto’; Wikipedia
‘William
Barrington-Coupe
[William H B Coupe]’; also Nicholas
Cook & Craig Sapp ‘Purely
coincidental? Joyce
Hatto and Chopin’s Mazurkas’
CHARM; Mark Singer ‘Fantasia
for Piano’ The
New Yorker 17 September 2007.
Notwithstanding
WB-C’s professed intention to issue
a ‘Hatto’ Scriabin sonata cycle from
the ‘early eighties’ plus the complete
Chopin polonaises (e-mail 26 April)
– ‘dusting himself off and moving
on to the next venture’ syndrome -
the Concert
Artist/Fidelio Recordings website
appears to have been dormant since July
2006.
My opinion
of the CDs originally selected for comment
remains unchanged. The following is
a list to date of the plagiarised artists
involved, with thanks to Farhan Malik:
ALBENIZ
Iberia Jean-François Heisser
[Erato 4509-94807-2]
BEETHOVEN Sonatas
Opp. 109, 110, 111 John O’Conor
[Telarc 80261]
BEETHOVEN Sonatas
Opp. 7, 106 John O’Conor
[Telarc 80335, 80363]
BEETHOVEN Sonatas
Opp. 53, 57 (Version B) John
O’Conor
[Telarc 80118, 80160]
BRAHMS Piano Concerto
Nos 1 Horatio Gutiérrez/RPO/André
Previn
[Telarc 80252]
BRAHMS
Piano Concerto No 2 Vladimir
Ashkenazy/VPO/Bernard Haitink
[Decca 410 199]
CHOPIN Waltzes Nos
1-20 (Version B)
Nos 1-18 Arthur
Moreira-Lima [Pro Arte 177]
Nos 19-20 Jerzy
Sterczynski [Selene 9305.12]
CHOPIN Mazurkas
Nos 1-57 Eugen Indjic [Claves
50-8812/3]
CHOPIN Four Rondos
Joanna Trzeciak [Pavane ADW
7291]
CHOPIN Études
75th Anniversary Edition
Tracks 1, 3-5,
7-12, 14-18, 26, 27 Yuki Matsuzawa
[Novalis 67533]
DEBUSSY Twenty Four
Préludes Izumi Tateno
[Finlandia FACD 411]
LISZT Italian Operatic Transcriptions
Vol II
Track 1 Endre Hegedüs
[Hungaroton HCD 31299], Francesco
Nicolosi [Nuova Era 6880], Oleg
Marshev [Danacord DACO 530]
Tracks 2, 4 Boris Bloch
[Accord 201722]
Track 3 Endre Hegedüs
[Hungaroton HCD 31299]
LISZT Années de Pèlerinage
II (Italie). Venezia e Napoli
Tracks 2, 3, 7 Michel Dalberto
[Denon CO 75500]
Tracks 8-10 Janina Fialkowska
[Musica Viva 1035]
LISZT Études Vol II
Tracks 6-11 Yuri Didenko
[Vista Vera 96006]
MOZART Eighteen Sonatas Ingrid
Haebler [Denon COCO 83689-93]
PROKOFIEV War Sonatas Nos
6-8 Oleg Marshev [Danacord
391, 392]
RACHMANINOV Piano Concertos 2, 3
Yefim Bronfman/Philharmonia/Esa-Pekka
Salonen [Sony 47193]
RACHMANINOV Twenty Four Preludes
Tracks 5, 16, 23, and 24 John Browning
[Delos DE 3044]
SCARLATTI Eighteen
Sonatas
Tracks 1, 5, 6, 10-17 Dubravka
Tomšič Srebotnjak [Digital
Concerto 604]
Tracks 2-4, 7-9, 18 Balázs
Szokolay [Naxos 8.550252]
SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concerto
No 4
Angela Brownridge/Hallé/Paul
Murphy [ASV 262]
Ates Orga
18 October 2007
A more complete article will follow
