Readers of this web
site will be well aware that, starting
some time in the 1990s, Joyce Hatto
has been steadily recording a daunting
proportion of the classical-romantic
piano repertoire for the extraordinary
and rather mysterious Concert Artist/Fidelio
Recordings company. The pity of it is
that precious few people who don’t
read this site will be aware of
it, for this is a company which has
eschewed, or been snubbed by (I don’t
know which) the major distribution outlets,
the principal publicity channels and
the longest-established musical journals,
with the result that the wider public
has lost out on some major recording
projects, not only those of Joyce Hatto
herself but also (just to name one)
an extensive documentation of the later
art of the fascinating Italian pianist
Sergio Fiorentino.
The present disc is
the first in a complete cycle of Mozart’s
works for piano. I have been sent the
first five of these, consisting of the
sonatas, and, since they are issued
as separate CDs, have elected to deal
with them in this way.
Fairly recently I reviewed
a box of the Mozart Sonatas, Fantasias
and Rondos played by Alicia de Larrocha.
This same box got a dusty five-line
dismissal from a certain august journal
in Great Britain but I much appreciated
it, to the extent of requesting "bargain
of the month" status for it. I
don’t regret that recommendation, but
now what about Joyce Hatto?
Firstly the recording
quality itself, since I felt that some
of Hatto’s Brahms and Chopin recordings
were a little lacking in range. This
same sort of body is hardly required
for Mozart but in any case I felt these
were better, though the level is rather
low (I had to turn the volume considerably
higher than usual, so this might be
a problem if you want to hear them on
a small CD-player). The sound given
to Larrocha is more forward and brightly
lit, a little aggressive in comparison,
though I didn’t notice this when I listened
to them on their own. These matters
could affect our perception of the performances
themselves; however, I am convinced
that each artist has found a producer
and engineer with the sensitivity to
give her a sound quality which in some
ways reflects her own sound. It may
be a penny-in-the-slot action to suggest
that the Spanish artist will give us
bright-lit colours under the hot noonday
sun while the English artist works in
mellower, more pastel colours, and the
difference may reflect their individual
psyches rather than their nationalities,
but certainly the difference is there,
so after reading this you may already
be half way towards making your choice.
I found it interesting
that Larrocha seemed to treat the first
group of sonatas (the five here plus
one more) with an ear for their roots
in the forte-piano music of Johann Christian
Bach, or even going further back still
to Scarlatti. This meant that her faster
movements, though not particularly swift,
had a brilliance which might have sounded
brittle were it not for the warm tone
she unfailingly produces, and the slower
movements, notably that of K.283, avoided
any proto-romantic leanings.
Hatto, on the other
hand, finds the mature Mozartian voice
in these sonatas. She gives the afore-mentioned
Andante of K.283 a gentle, flowing innocence
and generally takes a shade more time
over each movement, a question of letting
it breathe more freely than of actually
playing more slowly in many cases. In
her gentler way, however, she also finds
much distinction of touch and phrasing.
In the concluding Rondeau of K.281,
for instance, her rhythm has an infectious
lilt which leaves Larrocha sounding
just slightly stolid.
I do not wish to make
too much of these differences and if
you bought the Larrocha set you can
be well content with it. I also have
an idea that the competition will be
closer in the later volumes, since Larrocha
brought great stature and distinction
to the maturer works. In many cases,
passing between them, I wondered if
there was any point in trying to find
one "better" than the other.
In the opening Adagio of K.282 for instance,
the only Mozart piano sonata which has
its slow movement placed first, they
both just had me thinking what an extraordinarily
beautiful piece of music this is.
However, the little
differences do seem to me to mount up
to one big one. This music tends to
have schoolroom associations still,
and not to be loved in quite the same
way the concertos are loved. If this
is so for you, then I think Joyce Hatto
is just that little bit more likely
to make you love them. She doesn’t
actually "do" much with the
music, she just plays it with a simplicity
and a serenity which made me think of
Clara Haskil. That good? I’ll
have to come back on that when I’ve
reached the end of the cycle.
In any case, it will
not have escaped you that the Larrocha
cycle has been produced by one of the
"great" companies – BMG-RCA
– whose distribution channels will see
that music-lovers all round the world
are aware of its existence and will
have no difficulty in obtaining it.
Out of every hundred who will buy that
set, I wonder how many will even know
that the various alternatives on
offer include a cycle at least as good
by an English lady called Joyce Hatto?
Such are the ways of the world.
Christopher Howell
Volume
2 Volume
3 Volume
4 Volume
5
Joyce Hatto (piano)
