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Piotr Il’yich TCHAIKOVSKY
(1840-1893)
Piano Concerto no.1 in B flat minor, op.23*
Sergey PROKOFIEV
(1891-1953)
Piano Concerto no.3 in C major, op.26*
Toccata, op.11
Mily BALAKIREV
(1837-1910)
Islamey – Oriental Fantasy
 Joyce Hatto (piano)
National Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra/René Köhler
Recorded in the Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge, March 3rd 1997
(Prokofiev), March 5th 1997 (Tchaikovsky, Toccata), March 16th
1999 (Balakirev)
CONCERT ARTIST/FIDELIO
RECORDINGS CACD9195-2 [67.31] |
The more records I hear by this quite
extraordinary pianist the more my admiration for her grows. Extraordinary,
not in the sense of calling attention to what she is doing and imposing
herself between us and the music, but in that she always seeks to realize
the particular style of the composer. If these records had been issued under
a series of pseudonyms, a German name for the German/Austrian repertoire, a
Polish name for Chopin, a Hungarian name for Liszt and a Russian name for
Russian composers (I haven’t heard her in French music so far), I suggest
that few if any would have seen any reason to doubt that the pianist behind
each name was of that particular nationality.
True, her Tchaikovsky is not hysterical or neurotic, but as Nikolai Malko
and Rudolf Barshai have shown, not all Russians are like that anyway. This
is a swashbuckling, no-holds-barred account. From the opening bars the
conductor makes it clear that he means business (is this really the same man
who did a just about adequate job of Hatto’s Brahms 2?) and whatever this
orchestra really is, it’s brazen-toned horns are the real thing. The
introduction swings along at a pace only a little slower than Horowitz/Toscanini
(but that little makes all the difference; the music is allowed to emerge
here). When the real body of the first movement starts, Hatto is one of the
few pianists in my experience who manages to put sufficient accent on the
first note of each pair to avoid our getting the impression that the accent
is on the second, with incongruous results when the orchestra enters and
seems to want to give the soloist a lesson in how to play the theme. It’s
easy for the orchestra so they always get it right; it’s dashed difficult
for the soloist and most don’t seem to try.
I won’t go on to give a blow-by-blow account; I will simply record that when
I got to the end I realized that, unusually when I hear this repertoire that
I’ve heard so many times, I had simply been listening to the music with
sheer enjoyment and delight in Tchaikovsky’s own genius. Every performance
ought to do this but too few do. If I wanted to be carpingly critical I
could say that I thought the second subject in the last movement a mite
heavy-handed (delicacy is not lacking elsewhere) and that recorded
perspectives seem to shift, with the piano sometimes alarmingly gargantuan
compared with the orchestra and at others fitting in with it nicely – and in
the last few pages it veers between the two. But if you want a performance
which brings the old warhorse up as fresh as paint, this is it.
The balance is consistently good in the Prokofiev. Once again it is the
conductor who has to start things off, and he does so by sounding a note of
strong passion. Sure enough, this is not one of the performances that makes
Prokofiev seem a 20th Century Saint-Saëns, for it has a similar strength and
purpose to the Tchaikovsky, with the addition of flashes of droll wit and
irony. In short, this performance hits the mark too.
In addition we get two of the most notoriously difficult – nay hair-raising
– Russian pieces for solo piano, both brought off with fine aplomb. I did
wonder if the pianissimos in the Prokofiev might not have been even softer –
not that Hatto barges through at a steady fortissimo, the dynamic contrasts
are there but what I miss is a sense of latent power.
The sheer virtuoso demands of Balakirev’s "Islamey" have led to it’s being
considered a sort of test-piece for the would-be world-beater; I suppose
it’s to my own loss that I somewhat doubt if its musical returns repay the
eight minutes spent listening to it, let alone the eight hours a day for
eight months or whatever it takes to set up an acceptable performance. Hatto
has all the virtuoso heft to bring it off, whatever one’s opinion of its
worth.
Christopher Howell
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