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Isaac ALBÉNIZ
(1860-1909)
Iberia (complete) (1905-1908)
 Joyce Hatto (piano)
Recorded at Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge, UK., January 2003
CONCERT ARTIST
CACD-9120-2 [77.17] |
Not many of us would pretend that you have to
be German to know how to sing lieder, or Russian to turn in a satisfactory
reading of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, yet there are people who maintain that
only English musicians can understand Elgar or Vaughan Williams. Spanish
music suffers even more from this kind of prejudice.
Prodigiously talented as a child, Albéniz later toured widely and was justly
celebrated as a virtuoso pianist. As a composer, patronage from a member of
the Coutts family provided financial security and led to the production of a
wide range of works including a number of operas. It is his piano music,
however, that is best known to the general music lover.
The final years of his short life were much given over to the composition of
the set of twelve piano pieces collectively entitled Iberia. Published in
four volumes, these pieces were admired and praised by Debussy, and some
commentators have noted similarities between them and Debussy’s music,
particularly the Préludes. Whilst it is easy to perceive what it was that so
impressed Debussy, attempts to draw too many close parallels between the
work of the two composers are, in my view, misleading. The keyboard writing
in Iberia is highly charged, ferociously difficult in places, its nature
closer to that of Liszt than Debussy. Then there is the sheer scale of the
pieces. They have been described as "miniature tone poems", but the word
miniature gives quite the wrong impression. The longest of these pieces
exceeds nine minutes, and there is a general tendency to examine and develop
themes at length. Debussy, on the other hand, preferred to establish mood
and atmosphere in a more concise way. Finally, there is little of that
peculiar luminosity of sound we find in Debussy, the Spanish composer’s
intentions being quite different. There is some similarity, though, where
the Spanish aspects of the music are concerned, the rich darkness favoured
by both composers a world away from the transparent clarity of Ravel.
Each of the twelve pieces carries a title referring to some aspect of Spain.
Places, ceremonies or dances figure largely, mainly from Andalusia – despite
the composer’s Catalonian origins – and the sombre, brooding melancholy we
often associate with the art of that region is very much in evidence here,
as is the harsh, fiery brilliance and unpredictable nature. Take any passage
at random and the national origin of the music is unmistakeable. Melodic and
rhythmic structures are clearly drawn from traditional Spanish models, but
these influences are subtly integrated into the overall style. The keyboard
writing, the grandeur of the composer’s intentions, the expansiveness and
remarkable psychological complexity, all combine in music which stretches
Romanticism to the limits of what it can express. Chromatic harmonies abound
and tonality is frequently indeterminate. In intent, then, if not in sound,
this music seems to follow on naturally from Liszt towards Mahler,
Schoenberg and the revolutionaries of the twentieth century.
Joyce Hatto has recorded an outstandingly successful performance of this
masterpiece. Collectors already familiar with her work will expect the
technical mastery as a matter of course and will not be disappointed. The
control she exhibits in the swirling semiquaver sextuplet accompaniment
figures in Triana, for example, is astonishing, and witness also the
superbly graded crescendo in the opening Evocación. Her reading of the third
piece, El Corpus Christi en Sevilla, is masterly, the extremes of the piece
magnificently controlled and integrated, from the colourful (yet emotionally
detached) representation of the procession to the immense calm of the second
section and close, achieving there a quite remarkable poise. Such wide (and
wild) changes of mood are very much a feature of this music, and Hatto is
particularly successful at drawing the different elements together into a
convincing whole.
Comparing Joyce Hatto and Alicia de Larrocha brings us back to the point
raised at the beginning of this review. Do you have to be Spanish to be able
to play this repertoire? De Larrocha (in 1972, the second of her three
recordings) yields nothing to Hatto in respect of technical command, and she
is, as we should expect, splendidly at ease with the rhythms and melodies of
her own country. Yet one of the great strengths of Hatto’s reading, heard on
its own terms, is her ability to create and maintain the inevitably Spanish
atmosphere that is at the heart of this music whilst at the same time
placing the music firmly in its true historical (and international) context.
De Larrocha’s reading has something of a classical feel to it, which is
emphatically not to say that the reading is small-scale, only that the focus
seems differently directed.
The Spanish nature of this music means that, on one level at least, it is
immediately attractive, but in truth it reveals its full meaning only
gradually. Listening to the twelve pieces in one sitting is a challenge, but
immensely rewarding at the same time. Joyce Hatto’s performance is
conveniently issued complete on a single disc with informative notes by my
colleague Jonathan Woolf. Each of de Larrocha’s readings is available on two
discs coupled with other works by Albéniz and Granados.
William Hedley
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