It has been some time since I have closely followed the world of classical recordings, but I can't help getting wrapped up in the Joyce Hatto hoax. Who doesn't love a little controversy?
Have a look for yourself. My favorite line - "We have yet to investigate a Hatto recording that has not proved to be a hoax."
Scroll down for a bio of the phantom conductor
René Köhler.
From Alex Ross - "Jessica Duchen links to an internet discussion where one piano expert is quoted as saying that Minoru Nojima's Liszt playing is 'too clinical' and expressing a preference for Hatto — not aware that he's discussing the same performance!"
from
Gramophone in 2006:
Celebrating Hatto's mastery and musicianship
Recorded between 1990 and 2004, these performances are reissued in brilliantly refurbished and clarified sound, forming part of a 100-CD discography. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that no other pianist, male or female, would even have considered such a comprehensive undertaking.
Doubting Thomases, of which there are apparently many, may well wonder how Joyce Hatto achieved such unalloyed mastery and musicianship when tragically beset with ill-health. But others will surely celebrate an awe-inspiring triumph of mind over matter, of the indomitable nature of the human spirit.
Even in the most daunting repertoire, her poise in the face of one pianistic storm after another is a source of astonishment. Her warmth, affection, ease and humanity strike you at every turn, her scale and command without a hint of superficial or hard-nosed virtuosity. Here, Liszt's occasional histrionics and theatricality are tempered with the most aristocratic quality.
In Preludio, the dazzling curtain-raiser, Hatto yields nothing to any other pianist in fearless authority, while the notorious difficulties of Feux follets are resolved with a surpassing fluency and vivacity. She is no less gloriously responsive to La ricordanza's heady romanticism (for Busoni, 'like a packet of yellowed love letters') and Etudes Nos 10-12 are natural triumphs of an unswerving vision and poetry, concluding performances that form a rare tribute to their symphonic weight and breadth, the quasi-orchestral might of Liszt's outsize opus.
The same attributes apply to Hatto's Chopin-Godowsky. And whether you consider Godowsky's elaborations delectable or outrageous - or both - you will only hear pure music from this pianist. Listen to her in Ignis fatuus (No 4) where, as Hatto herself ruefully puts it, Godowsky adds a few extra hours to your practice, or in the 'touch of paprika' she notes in the coda of No 7; in No 27 where Godowsky turns innocence into experience and sophistication with a vengeance, or in No 8 in what Hatto calls 'a riot of bravura ingenuity' ' you can only listen and wonder. Amazingly, she has all the time in the world to make her points in the turbulence of No 20 and what gentle sparkle, what unforced brilliance in 'Badinage', where Godowsky so mischievously gives you two Etudes for the price of one.
Joyce Hatto may well be 'the greatest pianist no one has heard of'; her work demands a book rather than just a review.
and
Gramophone in 2007.
