Volume 4 of Joyce Hatto’s
Brahms cycle has a slightly odd programme
– wouldn’t the op.79 Rhapsodies belong
with op.76 rather than the much earlier
Scherzo and Ballades? – but if you buy
the whole series, as I hope you will,
you can tinker around with programme-building
to your heart’s content.
The big piece here
is the Paganini Variations. There are
pianists who take it that Brahms wished
to recreate at the piano something of
the diabolical extroversion of Paganini
himself, and go for the piece hammer
and tongues. I don’t want to rule out
such an approach, provided there is
plenty of tonal variety on offer, but
Joyce Hatto leaves us in no doubt that
she is seeing the work through Brahmsian
eyes. The theme itself has a touch of
mellowness, the quirky melody bathed
in a romantic glow, and later she seeks
a satisfying roundness in the sound
rather than virtuoso dash. I don’t wish
to imply she is not a virtuoso – this
is one of those pieces where, if you’re
not a virtuoso, you just won’t make
it to the end – or that her tempi are
particularly slow, though they are slow
enough to allow her to find a full,
rounded sonority in the more virtuosic
variations, while her handling of the
more lyrical moments is winsome indeed.
A deeply satisfying and very musical
performance.
But "satisfying"
is really the adjective that comes to
mind all through. In each of the smaller
pieces that make up the remainder of
the programme, she has a way of immediately
impressing you, as each new one starts,
that she knows just how this one has
to go. Tempi are natural and unforced,
the sound is always warm and round,
the melodies sing and the accompaniments
support them in just the right way.
It all sounds so very right that I hardly
want to single out any one piece, except
to remark on her very fine "orchestration"
of the closing section of the second
Ballade, with its descending melody
in the middle voice.
If anything is less
than perfect, it is the recording, or
rather the 1994 recordings which sound
a little cavernous. This didn’t worry
me much in the gentler pieces, which
means most of op.76, but the more heroic
parts of the Scherzo and the Ballades
don’t quite expand. No complaints about
the 2002 recording, which is satisfyingly
full to match the performance.
I would, though, like
to raise a more general consideration.
I was only yesterday writing about Richter’s
performance of the Brahms first Sonata,
and felt this was a legendary, visionary
performance that could be compared only
with other performances by the same
artist. I also felt it might not be
an ideal example for others. Hatto,
on the other hand, is a model for students.
So where does all this leave us? Well,
if you are one of those rare geniuses
such as Richter – and there are never
more than a very few living at any given
time – then you have to follow your
own muse and try to realise your own
personal vision. You may end up by illuminating
some composers but swamping others,
and you probably can’t help this.
If, on the other hand,
you aren’t one of those rare geniuses
but you’re very musical and have a well-schooled
technique, then you (I’m sorry about
this you all the time as if I
really knew all this at first hand,
but I think it must be like this)
can try to let the composer take over,
as it were, and express his music through
you. This, I believe, is something of
what Joyce Hatto does, a sort of pianistic
equivalent of Sir Adrian Boult, who
was an unfailingly warm, vital and understanding
guide to a wide range of music. And
I say this is a good guide for students
since it is an ambition that a normal
(but gifted) person can reasonably set
himself, though perhaps not many will
achieve it as well as Hatto does. And,
as Boult showed on many occasions and
as Hatto certainly showed in the 2004
performances in the fifth volume of
this series, the "interpreter-performers"
can sometimes achieve greatness as well
as the "genius-performers".
Sorry if this sounds
like pretentious twaddle, but I wish
to distinguish between two totally different
types of artist. Or put it another way:
go to Richter for Richter, but go to
Hatto for the composers she plays. And
I hope this is as she would wish.
Christopher Howell
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Joyce Hatto (piano) 