CD Review

Having heard Joyce Hatto praised to the skies in CD review, I am now in a state of shock to learn that some of her recordings might be the work of others.

Messageboards on the Internet are speculating that even her career before she "gave up public performance" might be 'exagerated'. Surely the BBC has some archive material? Did she or didn't she perform all the Beethoven-Liszt symphonies on the radio in the fifites?

Has anyone actually heard this pianist live?

On reflection, even her illness is strange. It is said that 30 years ago she was so ill that a critic suggested it was wrong for a person who looked so terrible to perform in public. Indeed , she must have been very ill (Who was this critic and in what newspaper?). Yet Joyce Hatto apparently fought this cancer for thirty years taking only aspirin for pain. Having watched dear ones dying of the disease, Joyce Hatto's survival is as remarkable as recording all the Chopin-Godowsky Studies at 70 yrs old.

Is there any fact about Joyce Hatto's life and performing career that can be verified?

In haste, nothing really to add, other than I think Jessica Duchene may have a more up to speed article about this in 'The Independent' next Monday or Tuesday.

I understand that as part of her research JD has spoken to Hatto's consultant at Addenbrooks Hospital about Hatto's illness.

Ab.

H

I haven't heard it, but it's generally reckoned to be as much of a fake as the CDs themselves are increasingly being discovered to be. Who knows? - even the correspondence, such as there exists of it, between WB-C/JH and others may also turn out to be fake and, afte all, if it were all genuine yet the CDs were all fake, the deception would surely have risked being uncovered earlier by those in correspondence with the apparent perpetrators.

Joyce Grenfell? ("William; don't do that"). Eileen Joyce, too, no doubt. Not to mention James Joyce, who must somehow have been an inspiration for the sheer riverrun of CDs.

In the old and well-worn catchphrase, you pays your money (for the CDs) and you takes your Joyce - only to find eventually that there's no Joyce there at all; now that's what I'd call Hobson's Joyce - or at least I would do had Ian Hobson's Chopin/Godowsky Studies been ripped on the "Hatto" set, which so far seems not to be the case (the purloined pianists on these CDs being Grante and Hamelin who, unlike Hobson, each recorded the entire cycle).

Best,

Alistair

Alistair, the two Murray Khouri interviews, one with Hatto, the other done this week after the story broke and available on Radio NZ Listen Again, are worth listening to.

Hatto's voice, if it is she, sounds very much like an elderly lady, and reminds me of a late aunt of mine to the extent that to my ears the accent has a tiniest trace of South African in it.

and the usual apocalyptic bombast from Lebrecht on the same site.

I wonder what CDR will have to says for themselves tomorrow.

Joyce Hatto certainly did exist. She was my piano teacher for about 2 years in the 1950s when I was 10-11 years old.
I was afraid of her. She made me cry. I felt bullied.
As the result of an incident where she accused me of saying something to her which I deny to this day, my parents removed me from the school & I subsequently won a music scholarship to another establishment, followed thereafter at the RCM.
I have an LP recording of hers dated 1959 of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto no. 2 in C minor op.18 & Preludes 2 & 6 on the Saga record label, ref XID 5045, with the Hamburg Pro Musica, conductor George Hurst. I find the playing unexciting & was therefore surprised when so much fuss was made of her CD legacy a year or so ago. I never heard her perform live in public.