With all of the uproar that the Joyce Hatto scandal has engendered, most critics, newsgroup posters, and other classical music authorities overlooked the possibility that authentic Hatto recordings not only exist but are bountiful in number. True, the late pianist’s husband William Barrington-Coupe confessed to fabricating most of the Concert Artist label releases credited to Hatto. Yet the real motive turns out not to be love, but revenge–or, if you will, “payback time”.
When Barrington-Coupe confirmed his presence at 99.9 percent of Hatto’s recording sessions, he wasn’t necessarily referring to Concert Artist material, but rather the extensive studio work Hatto took throughout the 1950s and ’60s to make ends meet. According to William Hedley’s booklet notes, Westminster’s music director Dr. Kurt List employed Hatto as the label’s “house pianist”, owing to her ability to sail through the most difficult literature in just one or two takes, with few if any inaccuracies. This could result in three or four albums per session, which List subsequently marketed under various pianist’s names, depending on the repertoire (List had a penny-pinching reputation).
Since Hatto was young, able, and in need of work, she didn’t mind playing “ghost pianist” to non-British counterparts like Edith Farnadi (Liszt’s Sonata and complete Années de Pèlerinage), Egon Petri (Bach/Busoni), Kurt Appelbaum (the complete Beethoven Sonatas), Yuri Boukoff (Prokofiev’s nine sonatas), Nadia Reisenberg (Chopin Nocturnes and Mazurkas), Jorg Demus (Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Partitas, and Well-Tempered Clavier, plus works of Schumann), and Paul Badura-Skoda (the Chopin Etudes, Brahms’ F minor Sonata, and various works by Schubert). Although List never told Hatto in advance for which pianist she’d be deputizing, once in a blue moon she’d find out and adjust her playing accordingly.
For example, one is hard pressed to determine which six of the 12 Scarlatti sonatas credited to Clara Haskil actually were Hatto’s work. And vice-versa, for that matter. However, it’s difficult to know if the Beethoven Sonatas’ rough-hewn qualities result from similar “hindsight”, or did Hatto radically change her style by the time she remade most of them for the series Concert Artist issued under Sergio Fiorentino’s name?
The 20 discs encompassing DG Original Masters’ “Authorized Hatto Volume 1” include most of the Westminster solo material mentioned above. The Boukoff, Reisenberg, and Demus Bach items will appear in Volume 2, along with Hatto’s complete Westminster concerto “ghostings” and a previously unreleased 1980 “audition” tape featuring five John Field Nocturnes. DG’s remastering engineers effect striking improvement upon the original LP and short-lived MCA Double Decker CDs I was able to sample. While I honestly can’t say that I’ve enjoyed this collection as much as the ersatz Hatto performances I’ve previously reviewed for Classicstoday.com, it’s good to see a major label come clean and give credit where credit’s due.
