Hehe....you beat me by four minutes!

Nick

Sadly, student pianists spend too many hours building up their technique to have time to listen to music...

 

...and if they do they are listening out for signs of technical fallibility in the great and good...

This is a very good point! There must be (so called) piano experts out there who had listened to her CD's and should have noticed how close they were both musically and technically to the other pianists!

I would also mention that on many message boards some people have said that they thought she was "a bit of an amateur" - "tub thumping" - or "not very good." (I quote approximately from memory here).

The problem is, that if it is true that several well known pianists, including Ashkanasy have been used, does that still hold true? (i.e. "amateur" etc etc)

It would seem to me that both her admirers and detractors have a lot of egg on faces - but especially those who were her detractors!

I love it - just shows how people can be duped!!!
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Mark

The whole thing is bizarre, and I agree that it's odd that none of the "piano experts" who reviewed the discs spotted any resemblances to anything they'd heard before. Certainly, in the case of the more out of the way stuff (Godowsky/Chopin, say) there can't be that many versions to compare (although I think some of the recordings had been doctored).

Yes, it is also rather funny that Bronfman and Ashkenazy et al. when they were Hatto fell to amateurish bits in the ears of the anti-Hattoists (although I suppose thump is what most things sound like on Radio 3 post compression these days. And, again, if the recordings had been tampered with they might sound odd. And, presumably, they were going on snippets on CD Review).

I've never - knowingly - heard a Hatto performance not having heard a Hatto CD or the Ashkenazy Brahms or Bronfman Rachmaninov or Simon Liszt pre-Hattoised versions (if I've ever heard the Transcendental Etudes at all) and I'm certain that I've never heard the Godowsky/Chopin. I wonder whose Beethoven was Hattoised? That could be amusing.

Reviewing performances is an odd business. I find the most interesting reviews to read are of 'Early Music' and of contemporary music. The point of departure is more often the music than the 'profundity' or otherwise of the performer.

Bws,

Mark,

I find fault with your logic, in that I think that plenty of those, such as myself, who didn't like 'Hatto', have no egg on our faces. I think the description I used was that I found her pianism rather unremarkable, but then I'm pretty fussy about how I like the piano played. I also said at the time that I had no problems with others liking it. Do I have egg on my face because I think Rattle's Beethoven terrible while the Penguin Guide gifts it 3 stars? Or because I find Gilels playing of the Beethoven sonatas rather mechanical? Or.....

In fairness, most of the works I listened to on the CD Review segment, I didn't know all that well. The exceptions I recall were some Chopin etudes and a late Beethoven sonata (I think it was the op.109 but it could have been 110 or 111). I put on Ashkenazy (Chopin) and Solomon (Beethoven) for comparison and found 'Hatto' unremarkable. The only way I will have any egg on my face is if when these recordings are exposed they turn out to be ones I have spoken highly of or, indeed, the two I compared them with (though I think they would have been doctored in those cases). Actually, I'm curious to see whose recordings were used for these (but I suspect that will take some time as they're quite popular in the repertoire).

No, the reason the pro-Hatto forces (in the media) have egg on their faces is not, in my view, because they liked the recordings, rather because there were some question marks over them, things that simply didn't add up. Many of us who found the recordings unremarkable asked those questions. Those in the media did not and the fraud was allowed to continue for longer than would otherwise have been the case.

regards, Tam

Well, they were unremarkable to my ears (and having listened to the samples on the Pristine Audio site, remain so). Who was playing it isn't really terribly important as far as that's concerned - my point there are plenty of well regarded, and famous artists who do nothing for me. And unless they turn out to be by someone whose pianism I know well and like - there is no reason why I would have egg on my face simply because we now know someone else was playing (in many cases whom I've not heard play before - I am, after all, no expert on the piano, unlike some).

regards, Tam

(Note - I would except Ashkenazy/Haitink - but I don't think I heard that on Radio 3 or else I would have compared it to one of the many recordings I have.)

To be a bit more explicit, I don't think, if I remember correctly, that you made comments such as "amateur" - "sounds like my grandmother" - "tub thumping" etc. I think you said as you repeated above, the playing unremarkable. Obviously people can have degrees of liking or not liking a certain performer or performance.

Personally I did not hear enough myself to make any valid judgement, although I thought the sound was very big, and also technically pretty good. I would not have rated the playing so highly against a pianist like Grigory Sokalov, but then there are few if any that can be compared to Sokalov, in my opinion.

The "egg on face" quote was really from Bryn (I think) and I used it again to refer to some of the more extreme comments originally made by some message boarders a few months ago.

Best wishes

Mark

I found Hatto performing Rachmaninoff on youtube. Only it takes 1 min for them to start.
I thought it was good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CjEckL4994