The Tchaikovsky Concerto
has previously been available on a Concert
Artist disc coupled with Saint-Saëns
Fourth Concerto. Interested readers
should look at my review of that disc
for comments on the former - http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/May03/TCHAIKOVSKY_hatto.htm
Here it’s fashioned
in the context of an all-Russian disc
and takes as a discmate another bedrock
concerto, Prokofiev’s much played Third.
Much played, yes, but not so often played
as it is here. Superficially this is
a relatively slow interpretation – and
Hatto is certainly not known as a slowcoach
in this area of her repertoire. Take
a look at the insert timings and you
can see that she is nearly two minutes
slower in the Adagio than Kissin and
a minute and a half slower than Katchen.
She is a minute slower than Argerich
(though Argerich has been slowing up
in this concerto over the years – 9.01
with Abbado and 9.39 with Dutoit) and
roughly the same amount vis-a-vis Demidenko
and Katchen. This is not to mention
Prokofiev’s own celebrated, blazing
sword recording with the LSO (on Naxos).
How best, in spite
of crude matters of timings, to characterise
Hatto and Köhler’s interpretation?
Well in his own recording the composer
was nervous, electric, quick, cultivating
huge contrasts and laconic profiles,
grotesque and urbanely thrown away in
equal measure. Hatto and Köhler
are very different: slower, yes, but
also subtle in their interplay and crafting.
This is especially so in the Theme
and Variations second movement where
we find something remarkably Gallic
about the pianism, about the orchestration,
about it all. I confess I was taken
aback by the Ravelian inheritance that
becomes exposed here. I’d never considered
the Concerto in that light before, blinded
as I generally have been by the infectious
virtuosic swagger and unremitting energy
of it all. Here, suddenly, I see the
it in a different light. Whether others
will share this more subdued, multi-hued
Gallic vision, an interpretation which
is not anti-virtuosic but which promotes
tints and colours above mere rhetoric,
will remain to be seen. In its determined
way however it has subtly shifted my
perception of the way the piece can
sound.
As a bonus – infelicitous
word for these two notoriously devilish
pieces – we have Prokofiev’s Toccata,
lighter and more full of shade than
usual, though not stinting on the leonine
drama. And there’s Islamey, a remorseless
trial of technique, which sounds evocative
and sensitively shaped. It is rather
more musically involving than usual
in this performance – it seems here
co-opted firmly to the more sensitive
wing of Lisztian inspiration.
These are perceptive
and thought-provoking performances.
They avoid all hints of routine and
casual run-through parochialism. Instead
these readings are welded to recreative
imagination and technical surety. I’m
sure the Prokofiev Concerto, in particular,
will be the cause of some challenging,
fruitful debate.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review
by Christopher Howell
The Tchaikovsky
is also available coupled to Saint-Saens
Piano concerto No 4. See reviews by
Jonathan
Woolf and William
Hedley
MusicWeb
can offer the entire Concert
Artists catalogue
Joyce Hatto (piano) 
