|
The English pianist, Joyce Hilda Hatto, was the daughter of an antique dealer and passionate pianophile. She studied with Marian Holbrooke (sister of the composer Joseph) and Serge Krish (who had been a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni) before continuing during her early career to receive guidance from such luminaries as Benno Moiseiwitsch, Nicolai Medtner, Alfred Cortot, Matyas Seiber and Clara Haskil, Sviatoslav Richter, Hindemith and Nadia Boulanger, among others. Calm and indomitable from the start, she rejected a more conventional Conservatoire education after the Royal Academy of Music had told her that a career as a pianist was a daunting prospect for a young girl who would be better employed learning how to cook a good roast.
In the late 1940's and 1950's Joyce Hatto appeared with conductors ranging from Victor de Sabata and Sir Thomas Beecham to Paul Kletzki and Jean Martinon. She made her London debut in 1952. Her recitals in the UK included, in 1953, the entire nocturnes of Chopin and Field followed later in the decade by all the Beethoven symphonies transcribed by Franz Liszt, the first known modern performance of the cycle and championed at a time when Liszt's star shone dimly. Her debut at Wigmore Hall was in 1954 with F. Liszt's Malédiction. The Guardian's Neville Cardus wrote of her (live) J. Brahms Paganini Variations that they were "despatched in a seamless riot of ecstatic bravura laced with underlying deep musical feeling rarely countenanced in this work".
In 1956 Joyce Hatto married William Barrington-Coupe, the then artists and repertoire manager for Saga Records, who had a penchant for pianists: he subsequently became the first to record the late Lazar Berman in the west, as well as Sergio Fiorentino, Eileen Joyce and Lev Pouishnov. From then on, he acted as her manager, guide and mentor, and it is for his label, Concert Artist Recordings, for which all her later recordings were made. In its Cambridge studio, she had the luxuries of one of the two Steinways that Sergei Rachmaninov played when in the UK, and of being able to record whenever the mood took her or health allowed. It was for EMI, however, that she recorded in 1970 Bax's Symphonic Variations with the conductor Vernon Handley, the first complete performance since 1920. Harriet Cohen, the composer's muse and mistress, had regarded the work as her private property (though playing it in a simplified version) till her death in 1967.
When diagnosed with cancer at the age of 41 Joyce Hatto toured Russia and Scandinavia to the highest critical acclaim. After 1972, when her cancer returned, she was plagued by the uncertain arrival of excruciating pain on the concert platform, often making it necessary to cancel at the last minute. Major surgery was only partly successful. Chemotherapy and radio therapy proved completely unhelpful. In 1979 she was forced to withdraw from the concert platform. A new form of treatment from the USA allowed Joyce Hatto to keep energy levels sufficiently high to seek gainful employment in the recording studio
Joyce Hatto achieved an astonishing renaissance. Phoenix-like she reinvented herself, creating a large and inclusive discography. In quantity, musical range and consistent quality her discography has been equalled by few pianists in history. Most of her recordings date from the early 1990's, when she had reached an age at which many pianists are resting on their laurels. They include the complete solo works of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, almost all of Chopin, huge swaths of F. Liszt, all the Prokofiev Sonatas, Albeniz's Iberia, and the complete concertos of J. Brahms, Camille Saint-Saëns and S. Rachmaninov - over 110 discs in all. Of her Schubert recordings, one critic wrote: "Think Schnabel and Curzon - and, dare I whisper it, better." She was one of just four pianists (and the only woman and septuagenarian) ever to have recorded commercially the entire 54 Studies on Chopin's Etudes by Leopold Godowsky, still considered to be the most difficult piano music ever written. Not one of her recordings, covering a spectrum from Scarlatti to Messiaen and with each composer stylistically defined, lacks some special insight even in the most familiar repertoire. Her musical imagination, unlike so many virtuosi, matched her awesome pianistic mechanism.
Joyce Hatto was one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced, and was aptly described as 'a hidden jewel' and 'the greatest living pianist that no one has heard of.' The microphone, luckily, loved her - and she enjoyed the process hugely. Unlike most artists, her discs are not performances patched together from a number of takes. She preferred to record complete movements without edits, stating proudly: "I do my practising at home." Ignored by the press she must have secretly wondered at the success of other less gifted pianists. But as she herself so modestly put it, 'as interpreters we are not important; we are just vehicles. Our job is to communicate.' She also expressed the belief that 'Shakespeare understood the entire human condition and so did the great composers.' |
