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Franz
LISZT (1811-1886)
Douze Études d’exécution transcendante S.139 (1852)
 Joyce Hatto (piano)
Recorded the Concert Artist Studios, 28 December 1990 and 6 January 2001
CONCERT ARTIST/FIDELIO RECORDINGS CACD
9084-2 [64.46]
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The cover of this disc has a cartoon of Liszt which I
feel I ought to recognise (it’s unacknowledged and has an indecipherable
squiggle of a signature at the bottom); the Liszt of popular legend, his
arms and fingers flailing like octopuses, the whole keyboard buckling and
rising like a ship breaking up in a storm, while the old hypocrite has a
beatific smile and a halo over his head. This image of the composer dies
hard, but listen to the words of Stanford who, as a young and impressionable
young man in his early twenties, heard Liszt play at a semi-private
gathering and recalled the event many years later:
"He was the very reverse of all my anticipations, which inclined me, perhaps
from the caricatures familiar to me from my boyhood, to expect to see an
inspired acrobat, with high-action arms, and wild locks falling on the keys.
I saw instead a dignified composed figure, who sat like a rock, never
indulging in a theatrical gesture, or helping out his amazingly full tone
with the splashes and crashes of a charlatan, producing all his effects with
the simplest means, and giving the impression of such ease that the most
difficult passages seemed like child’s play" (Pages from an Unwritten Diary,
Edward Arnold 1914, pp.148-9).
So how do you play Liszt? Well, I studied certain of his works (not the
Transcendental Studies) with the redoubtable Ilonka Deckers-Küszler, who was
most insistent that this music was to be played with the same respect for
the text you would think right for a Beethoven sonata, without rhythmic
distortions, manic rubato or any other playing to the gallery. In other
words, you play it like the good music it is. Furthermore, Deckers-Küszler
did not claim this as a discovery of her own; she was taught it at the
Conservatoire of her native Budapest in the early years of the 20th Century,
and there were teachers there who had it from Liszt.
Unfortunately, Ilonka Deckers-Küszler was a somewhat mysterious character
who never committed any of her playing to disc; she felt, however, that her
ideas were preserved in the series of Liszt recordings made by her
tragically short-lived pupil Edith Farnadi for Westminster. Alas, these have
never been readily accessible and I have never yet succeeded in hearing any
of them, or even in knowing exactly which works were recorded. Also of
interest would be the Liszt recordings by Louis Kentner, who studied at
Budapest Conservatoire at about the same time as Deckers-Küszler. Again, I
have never succeeded in tracking them down.
But what has all this to do with Joyce Hatto? Quite simply, that she too
sits down at the piano and, with technical nonchalance but a complete lack
of any virtuoso fuss, just gets on with playing the pieces "straight", like
the good music they are. Whether she learnt this from some past teacher or
whether her instincts led her this way I know not, nor does it matter much.
She is in that royal line of Liszt interpreters who believe this is great
music and is to be played as such.
Now, what you won’t get from Hatto is the sort of filigree passage-work that
makes you gasp at the sheer crystalline evenness of it all. Her passage-work
is good, but it is not part of her agenda to parade its "goodness" as an end
in itself. In other words, if it’s Liszt the circus-master you’re after, you
won’t get it. But if you have resisted Liszt because of his showy image,
then these wonderfully musicianly performances might make you change your
mind.
If there is any shortcoming, it is that Hatto tends more towards healthy
robustness than to winsome poetry. The booklet reprints 1956 notes by
Humphrey Searle, according to whom Harmonies du Soir "conjures up the
atmosphere of a peaceful evening with the distant echoes of bells". Here
Hatto, for better or for worse, is full-toned and intense.
The recording dates are eleven years apart. The sound is fairly consistent
nonetheless, warm and pleasing if not especially lifelike. All the same, if
you care about Liszt the composer you should not miss this disc.
Christopher Howell
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