At
last we have a boxed set containing
all the recordings made by wunderkind
Joyce Hatto. It is a remarkable treasure
trove, comprising no fewer than 2046
discs. We have Joyce playing not only
the entire piano works of all the
composers ever preserved on disc,
but also innumerable rarities. For
example, we hear Hatto playing the
organ in Poulenc's Organ Concerto;
the harmonica in Vaughan Williams's
Romance in D flat as well as
the tuba in his Tuba Concerto in
F minor; and the Ondes Martenot
in Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony.
The miracle of overdubbing made it
possible for her to record all the
instruments in her unique version
of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture,
which is modestly credited to the
National Orchestra of Minsk, conducted
by Sue Donim.
This
superb boxed set proves that a perceptive
reviewer was absolutely correct when
he called Hatto "the greatest living
pianist that almost no one has ever
heard of". An even more perceptive
critic said that "She could sound
like any pianist who ever recorded".
In fact Hatto could claim to have
known many of the greatest living
masters of the keyboard, including
Sviatoslav
Richter,
Alfred
Cortot,
Benno
Moiseiwitsch,
Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin. But
her talents ranged much more widely
than the piano keyboard. She was a
cordon bleu chef; she climbed
Mount Everest before Sir Edmund Hillary
(although she was too modest to make
this public); and she is credited
with bringing the First World War
to an end through her dogged diplomacy.
It
must be admitted that the humming
heard in her recordings of Bach's
keyboard compositions is remarkably
similar to that made on the recordings
by Glenn Gould, but naturally Hatto's
versions are far superior. And she
does a remarkably convincing imitation
of Edward Elgar's voice when she asks
the orchestra: "Will you play this
tune as though you've never heard
it before?" at the beginning of her
ground-breaking recording of Elgar's
Pomp and Circumstance March No.
1 in D with the London Sympathy
Orchestra. This is all the more exciting
as it was recorded when Hatto was
only four years old. The informative
four-page booklet included with this
set points out Hatto's unprecedented
skills as an impressionist. It is
not widely known that she herself
made the sound of the nightingale
in her 78-rpm recording of Respighi's
Pines of Rome, and produced
the sound of arrows being shot into
the air for Laurence Olivier's film
of Henry V as well as the sound
of the gong at the beginning of J.
Arthur Rank movies.
This
boxed set includes some unusual recordings
not previously released and now available
to the public at Concert Artist's
very reasonable price (payment by
instalments can be arranged). They
include Joyce's comic monologues The
Day War Broke Out and The Road
to Mandalay, revealing a previously
unsuspected side of the artist; her
premiere recording of Smoke on
the Water, which was later such
a hit when the tune was taken up by
Deep Purple; and her complete set
of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's ten
Naxos Quartets, which were
later sadly imitated by the Maggini
Quartet (which produced very inferior
performances to Hatto's pioneering
interpretations).
We
can be extremely grateful to the producer
who compiled this unprecedented box
set - although he self-effacingly
says that he is only too grateful
to us for buying it.
Tony
Augarde
Concert Artist RIPOFF 100
[2046 CDs timings +/-
a little]
