It was perhaps inevitable that someone, somewhere would eventually pick up the Joyce Hatto story and run with it. In an unremarkable town in Hertfordshire, an astonishing fraud was born out of passion and ambition, a CD recording scam so jaw-droppingly artful it rocked the polite world of classical music, and provoked a firestorm of talk in internet forums and chat rooms around the world.

When the story broke early in 2007, I recall discussing it with aforementioned friend. I remember finding the story of Joyce Hatto and her devoted husband William ‘Barry’ Barrington-Coupe rather touching: the supreme act of love for his terminally ill wife. The whole story turned out to be a tale of plagiarism on a grand scale, a scheme so clever it left the musical establishment questioning everything they knew. It was quite probable that Joyce had colluded with Barry in the scam.

But why? Was it really an act of love, or was it to cock a massive snook at the stuffy, pompous classical music world and to raise two fingers to the critics who had panned Joyce’s last recitals, given when she was said to be sick with the cancer which eventually killed her (one critic said of her: “it was impolite to look ill” and, after adverse comments were made about her appearance on stage, she abandoned performing all together in the 1970s)?

When her recordings started to appear on CD, critics praised them to the rafters, eulogising over her skill, her range, her technical prowess, and describing her variously as “the indomitable champion of Liszt” (Daily Telegraph), and a pianist with a broad and rich repertoire not seen since Busoni. The music critic of the Boston Globe declared her “the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of.” Clearly, in the years since she retired from the concert platform, she had been working hard producing wondrous recordings, with the help of her husband, Barry, who owned the Concert Artists label. Her output was as astonishing as the wide range of her repertoire. She was compared to some of the greatest pianists of all time, such as Claudio Arrau, Dinu Lipatti and Sviatoslav Richter.

Her recordings were still receiving glowing plaudits when she died in 2006, but there were detractors too, as pianophiles in internet chat rooms around the globe gathered to discuss her oeuvre. How was it possible that every single CD was perfection? Was she really such an exceptional pianist, who could turn her hand to anything with apparent ease? A number of people began to suspect they might be prey to some sort of hoax, but when critic Jeremy Nicholas, who had staked his reputation on Joyce Hatto, made an open challenge in Gramophone magazine to anyone who had evidence of fakery to present it in a court of law, no one came forward. He had reckoned without the technology of iTunes…..

The rest, as they say, is history. After her recording of Liszt’s ‘Transcendental Studies’ was found to have been manipulated and “doctored”, more were examined, and evidence of the forgery became clear: put simply, Barry had been ripping off recordings of other pianists – Lazlo Simon, Marc-André Hamelin, Ingrid Haebler to name a few – and, with a little clever technological tweaking, passing them off as Joyce’s. Gramophone broke the story in February 2007, and the furore quickly earned the nickname ‘Hattogate’.

I started to collect articles and other snippets and morsels about Joyce with the intention of writing a short story or novella about her. The story of her life, her marriage to Barry, the scam itself seemed at once the stuff of fantasy – and self-delusion – and proof that truth is stranger than fiction. In reality, she probably wasn’t that great a pianist: there is very little biographical and documentary information about her, but patchy reviews from the 1950s, when she married Barry, reveal something about the true nature of her playing and her pianistic personality. It also emerged that statements about Joyce’s family were untrue, and that Barry had spent a year in prison in 1966 for wrongful tax submissions.

Did the recording scam start out as a game, a bit of fun that got out of hand? Or was there more malign intent on the part of Joyce and Barry to hoodwink the music press? It’s unlikely we’ll ever know for sure as Barry maintains tight-lipped on the subject. The only thing he has stated, and restated, is that he did it for love.

And what of the artists whose recordings were plagiarised? Some have enjoyed renowned acclaim and recognition as a consequence, proving that the scam has had a curiously double-edged effect. A number of the artists who were involved could call for criminal charges to be brought against Barry, but it seems that quite a few people just feel sorry for him.

It’s a peculiarly English tale, in my view: the domestic setting, the rather eccentric characters, the lame attempts to invent orchestras with which Joyce was said to perform (such as the National Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra). And fakery like this is nothing new: remember the Hitler diaries, or Van Meegeren’s fake Vermeers? The acclaimed author William Boyd invented an artist, Nat Tate, wrote a biography for him, and even produced some pictures by him (in fact, Boyd’s own doodles). I suspect people do this simply because they can (the technology Barry used to fake Joyce’s recordings was not particularly complicated), and there’s a certain amount of delicious schadenfreude to be gained in sitting back and waiting for the reaction of the critics and the so-called ‘experts’. I admit I rather enjoyed it.

Let us hope that the film of Joyce Hatto’s life is balanced, sympathetic and unsentimental. The story certainly has plenty of scope for comedy, but I would hate to think the main players were turned into figures of fun as a result. Meanwhile, it’s still possible to find a handful of Joyce’s recordings on eBay.

These are my personal thoughts on ‘Hattogate’, and do no reflect the views of anyone else or any music publications.

Composed in 2006, Meden Agan is Vriend’s first piano work for twenty five years, and “is written with the authority of a composer who really knows the piano……the music shows a love of Debussy, jazz, Messiaen, the great Spanish music of Albeniz and Granados……even Gottschalk’s Bamboula and Balakirev’s Islamey.” (James Lisney)

Other concerts in the series include collaborations with soprano Dame Emma Kirkby and violinist Paul Barritt, plus the launch of ‘Schubertreise’. Named after Lisney’s innovative concerts at London’s South Bank Centre (2001-2004), this extensive recording venture will cover the complete Schubert piano sonatas, set within contrasted programmes of music drawn from a wide range of genres. Volume one features Schubert’s Sonata in E, D 157, along with both his variation sets, miscellaneous short pieces from student years, and the youthful sonata of Icelandic composer, Arni Bjornsson.

Further information, including full programmes, here

Tickets can be purchased direct through www.concertgebouw.nl. Apply code MK120226 for discount.

Review of Joy Lisney’s debut at St John’s, Smith Square

Woodhouse Editions

My colleague and piano chum, Lorraine has a spinet in exactly the domestic setting it was intended: nestled in the bay window of her piano room, when seated at it one may watch the world go by outside the window, and the No. 12 buses rumbling down the road to Peckham Rye.

It’s more 30 years since I played a harpsichord seriously, when I played continuo for the school Baroque group (my finest hour (ha ha) being a performance of Bach’s ‘Double’ Concerto for two violins). I was a bit of a dab hand with figured basses in those days, and adored the music of Bach above all else. The school harpsichord was built from a kit, and you can still purchase period instruments in kit form to make at home (if you are sufficiently skilled).

I’m no period instrument purist, and I believe that Bach would have loved the piano, had it been around in his day. He was forward-thinking and I am sure he would have thoroughly exploited the range and flexibility of the piano. I love to hear Bach played on the piano. I’ve been working on the Concerto in D minor after Marcello BWV 974 recently, as part of my LTCL repertoire. Bach transcribed it for harpsichord from an oboe concerto by Italian composer Alessandro Marcello, and I was curious to hear what the piece sounded like on the harpsichord. So when Lorraine invited me to play her spinet, I jumped at the chance.

The middle movement, marked ‘Adagio’, opens with a hypnotic repeated quaver figure in the bass, which is maintained throughout and underpins the harmonies of the movement. Over the top floats a right hand part reminiscent of the ‘Air on a G String’, and which prefigures the ornamented melodic lines of Chopin’s Nocturnes (Chopin greatly admired Bach: you can see the influence very clearly in this piece). Playing this on the spinet made me realise how important the notation and ornamentation are, serving several purposes at once, so it would seem: to add movement and texture to an otherwise very plain melodic line, and to ‘fill in’ the silences on an instrument which cannot sustain sound (unlike the piano). At times it appears almost improvisatory, much in the manner of Chopin’s fioritura.

The touch of the spinet takes a little getting used to: there is a fractional delay between depressing the key and hearing a sound, due to the action of the plectrum plucking the string, which can be a little disconcerting to start with. I discovered some interesting effects and textures by rapidly repeating the chords from the left hand in the Adagio, a sound reminiscent of tracks from a Michael Nyman film score. I went home aglow with the experience and even had a look at some modern spinets online. It is tempting to purchase one for my studio as I know some of my more advanced students would love the chance to play one….. We shall see.

Meanwhile, you can enjoy period keyboard instruments in and around London at Fenton House, the Cobbe Collection, Finchcocks Musical Museum and Handel House Museum.

More on Lorraine and I at the spinet here

Period instrument makers and suppliers (antique, kits and new instruments):

Renaissance Workshop Company

Robert Morley Pianos

Peter Barnes Harpsichords

A track by Michael Nyman with frenetic continuo….

Michael Nyman – Angelfish Decay

And Glenn Gould at the piano….

Glenn Gould – Concerto in D minor after Alessandro Marcello, BWV 974: II. Adagio

My experience with my studies for my Performance Diploma taught me how to practice deeply, to the extent that I was on intimate terms with every note, every phrase, every nuance, every shading in all of my exam pieces. After I had performed the pieces for the exam, I might have considered them “finished”: certainly, on the morning of the exam, my thought was “I have done all I can. There is nothing more I can do”. But that was then, on 14th December 2011, and now, mid-February, picking up the Liszt Sonetto 123 del Petrarca again ready for Richmond Music Festival, the piece feels very familiar, yet certainly not “finished”. Of course, it needs some finessing for its next performance in just over two weeks’ time, and some reviewing in the light of the examiner’s comments, and, yes,  it is “all there”, in the fingers. But it has changed since I last played it: it’s more spacious and relaxed, gentler and more songful. It won’t be quite the same piece as before, when I play it in the festival.

The Mozart Rondo K 511 is multi-faceted: it prefigures Chopin in its rondo figure, a weary yet songful and at times highly ornamented melody, and harks back to Bach in its textural and chromatic B and C sections (a more detailed analysis of this work here). This is actually my second revisit of this work: I first learnt it before I started having lessons with my current teacher (about 5 years ago), and then revived it about two years ago. So, third time around, I am finding more subtleties in it, while also being struck at how cleverly Mozart manages to express his entire oeuvre in the microcosm of a piano miniature: there are arias, grand operatic gestures, Baroque arabesques and chromaticism, Chopinesque fiorituras, extremes of light and shade, sometimes within the space of a single bar. All the time when I am working on it, I find aspects which remind me why I picked it up in the first place, while also discovering new things about it.

A work can never truly be considered ‘finished’. Often a satisfying performance of a work to which one has devoted many hours of study can be said to put the work ‘to bed’, but only for the time being. The same is true of a recording: rather than a be-all-and-end-all record, maybe a recording is better regarded as a snapshot of one’s musical and creative life at that moment. As a pianist friend of mine once said “it’s always the way: you commit a work to a CD then discover all sorts of new things about it….”. American Pianist Bruce Brubaker, in his sensitive and thoughtful blog Piano Morphosis, describes this as a process of “continuing”. Thus, one performance informs another, and all one’s practising and playing is connected in one continuous stream of music-making.

Here is Mitsuko Uchida in Mozart’s Rondo in A minor, K 511. For me, this is a peerless interpretation of this work.

Mitsuko Uchida – Mozart: Rondo in A minor, K.511

Dulwich on View magazine is running a ‘create your own ragamala’ competition. Details here

J S Bach – The Well-Tempered Clavier, Italian Concertos, Partitas

The general consensus is that Bach “teaches you everything” (Melanie) and is “the basis of all piano knowledge” (Lorraine) – phrasing, voicing, balance, techniques such as jeu perlé and legato, “orchestration”. Master Bach and you can play anything. Bach was revered by many composers who followed him, perhaps most notably, Fryderyk Chopin, who, it is said, studied the ’48′ every day (he took a copy of the manuscript with him on his ill-starred trip to Majorca).

Mozart

I’m revisiting Mozart’s late Rondo in A minor, K511, at the moment, and I am struck, not for the first time, by how Mozart’s piano music presents his oeuvre in microcosm: operatic, orchestral, choral – it’s all there. He is also a master of chiaroscuro (light and shade), with changes of mood and shading often occurring within the space of just a bar or two. Mozart’s piano music requires great clarity and elegance. Never forget Schnabel’s comment “too easy for children, too difficult for artists”.

Beethoven – Piano Sonatas

Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas are considered to be the New Testament of piano repertoire (Bach’s WTC is the Old Testament). Learn any one of the sonatas and you’ll have a snapshot of Beethoven’s creative impulse, as well as insights into how rapidly the instrument was developing at the time. Beethoven pushed the boundaries, both of the form and the instrument for which he was writing. For all the clichéd readings of it, the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata (Opus 27/2) remains a revolutionary work, written by a composer poised on the cusp of change. His music is full of wit, humour, pathos & philosophy.

Chopin – Études, Nocturnes

I suppose it goes without saying that any pianist worth his or her salt should study at least one of Chopin’s Études and Nocturnes at some point. Chopin elevated the Étude from student study to a highly refined genre, while retaining the original intention of the ‘study’. They are all different, and individual, and they all offer opportunities to hone specific techniques. Some are very well known (the ‘Winter Wind’, ‘Butterfly’, ‘Aeolian Harp’, ‘Tristesse’, ‘Revolutionary’) which makes them doubly difficult to play, for one wants to do one’s absolute best by them. Learn a handful of the Études – or all of them – and you will be scaling the high Himalayan peaks of piano repertoire.

The Nocturnes are exquisite miniatures, some of the finest small-scale music written for piano, and studies in beautiful cantabile playing. The distinct ‘vocal line’ in these pieces lends great drama and profound emotional expression, together with the judicious use of tempo rubato. Many have decorative features such as trills and fiorituras, which, when played well, appear to float over the surface of the music. The influence of Mozart on Chopin is clear in these works, in their distinct melodic lines. For me, the best performances of Chopin’s Nocturnes reveal him as a classical composer, with understated rubato, and close attention to structure and notation. Chopin may be ‘Prince of the Romantics’ (Count Adam Zamoyski), but he revered Bach and Mozart.

On a more general level, playing Chopin’s music offers the modern pianist a fascinating insight into what kind of instrument the piano was in the first part of the nineteenth century. More advanced than Beethoven’s piano, it was still some way from the modern instrument we know today. Hearing his music played on a period instrument is fascinating and makes sense of his dynamic markings such as sostenuto, and his pedal writing. (The Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, Surrey, has three ‘Chopin’ pianos, which he may have played during his 1848 visit to England.)

Rachmaninov

The landscape artist in sound, Rachmaninov presents the vastness of his native Russia in his music, and a sense of history. A reluctant performer himself (in a photo in the green room at Wigmore Hall he looks as if he’d do anything but play the piano!), he wrote piano music which is difficult yet so beautifully constructed that it is extremely satisfying to play.

Debussy

Debussy forces you, as a pianist, to totally reappraise the way you play, and how the instrument works. In a lot of his piano music, you need to forget the piano has hammers. Debussy’s own piano playing was described as “hands sinking into velvet”. I learnt so much about arm weight, lightness, and touch from my study of Debussy for my Diploma, so much so that I feel he is now required playing for any pianist, whatever level. (Even simplified versions of Debussy’s greatest piano works are worth investigation.) Debussy’s piano music also presents some interesting paradoxes for the modern pianist: we have this idea that his music is fluid and gentle. It was, relative to the prevailing style, but we have now gone too far now, and many interpretations capitalise, sometimes erroneously, on the “impressionistic” nature of his music. The Preludes, for example, contain many different moods. shadings, and exercises in touch and tone. Definitely worth studying.

Bartok, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Messiaen, Stockhausen, Ligeti

I’m a recent convert to atonal music. I actually sat through a piece by Stockhausen in a concert earlier this week and enjoyed it, and I learnt a piece by Messiaen for my Diploma. It’s good to play outside your comfort zone, not least because it introduces you to new and different repertoire (I feel the same about Scarlatti and his cohorts!). Interestingly, younger students are often very receptive to dissonant and atonal music, because they have not yet experienced enough ‘straight’ classical music. I have also found some of my students like minimalist music, for the same reason.

This is by no means comprehensive, and is also very subjective. There are many, many more pieces and composers which could be considered “required reading” for pianists. Do please feel free to leave comments and keep the discussion going.

And if you fancy playing this yourself, find the sheet music here

Or so it appeared last night as he wowed the Wigmore audience with a programme of radical and adventurous repertoire. Read my review for Bachtrack here

This is what my teacher said to me at my recent lesson, during which we worked on Chopin’s Nocturne, Opus 62 no. 2, the last Nocturne published in his lifetime. In bars 20-22 the left hand plays descending sustained minims, achieved by silently changing from a thumb to a fifth finger. I’d got the fingering right, but I could not sing those sustained notes. As a result, they were lost amid all the other sounds and textures in this passage. Once I’d sung the notes, I found I could sound them easily, and a little extra weight in the finger added a warmth and resonance which was obvious, but not overpowering, under the gorgeous treble line.

It sounds obvious, that we should listen all the time when we are playing, whether in practice or performance, but it is quite common for us not to listen, and to allow the mind – and ears – to wander as we work, and thus not take in fully what we are doing at the keyboard. As pianist Murray McLachlan said at a recent EPTA event I attended, “use your ears: they are your fiercest critic and your best teacher”.

My piano lesson last week was mostly concerned with listening as both pieces I presented have a strong melodic line which needs to sing out over the bass (the other piece was the slow movement from Bach’s D minor Concerto after Marcello, BWV 947). As I listened to myself playing, striving always for the most beautiful cantabile sound, I learnt to adjust my arm weight, lightening it to produce a better sound. In the Chopin, even where a passage is marked crescendo, leading to forte (for example, from bar 12), one should not allow the arm to become heavy: the sound one is aiming for here is increased warmth rather than volume. At this point, my teacher and I paused to discuss first-hand accounts of Chopin playing: it is said that he never played louder than mezzo-forte (even if he had written forte in the score). ‘Warming up’ the sound can create the effect of an increase in volume, without losing a beautiful tone.

I find it hard to persuade my students to listen. Too often they want to gallop through their pieces, get the notes right and not bother too much about producing a good tone. Yet, the production of beautiful tone is what pianists strive for above anything else: even the most spiky passages of Prokofiev or Stockhausen should be played with careful attention to tone. Be critical as you play: listen all the time and if you don’t like the sound you are hearing, find ways to adjust it to make it better by experimenting with arm weight (lightening the arm will usually produce a better tone), and by ‘visualising’ the sound you want to achieve before you play it (it’s amazing how different your tone will be if you spend a few moments before you play imagining the sound). We should keep our ears open and attuned to what we are doing, to allow us to make minor adjustments to our playing and sound production. If you like the sound you are producing in a particular passage, try and remember that sound for next time, and what it felt like as you were playing it. Were your arms light, your wrists soft? What else were you doing with your body to create that sound?

Recording yourself playing is another invaluable aspect of listening: I have routinely started recording my students, especially those who have exams fairly imminently, and sending them a soundclip to listen to. I ask them to listen critically, not for errors and slips, but for an ‘overview’ of the sound. I ask them to make notes (to bring to the next lesson for discussion with me) about what they liked and disliked about the sound, and to think about how they can improve it or change it.

If you do record yourself playing, don’t listen to the recording as soon as you’ve made it. You are likely to be far more critical at this point and may not listen in the right way. Leave it a few days, and then listen to your recording. Review it carefully and note what you like and dislike about your playing. Compare recordings of the same piece, made at different times and in different circumstances (for example, in practice, in performance, on a different instrument etc.).

Another aspect of listening is of course hearing other people play, live and on disc. Go to concerts, listen to recordings and note what you enjoy about the sounds other pianists make. Remember that they are probably employing the same techniques as you to create that sound!

Chopin – Opus 62 no.2

Here is Richter