[ANPPOM-Lista] [etnomusicologiabr] a grande fraude do piano

[Carlos Palombini]

Hugo, desculpe a resposta longuíssima...

O texto do *Intelligent Life* cujo link incluí me pareceu muito bom também,
porque desenvolve questões cruciais do episódio, sobre as quais vou-me
estender mais ainda. A primeira delas é o fato de que nada mais nada menos
que Tom Deacon, produtor da série Great Pianists of the 20th Century
(Philips), e Bryce Morrison, crítico da revista *Gramophone*, emitiram
juízos antagônicos sobre as mesmas gravações, desqualificando a publicada
sob o nome do pianista que a executou, e derramando-se em elogios sobre
ela, quando publicada sob o nome de Hatto. Cito o texto:

Yet Morrison’s empathy for Hatto had surely warped his critical judgment.
> Several years ago his verdict on Yefim Bronfman’s recording of
> Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto was that “the pianist operates at too
> low a voltage, he lacks the sort of angst and urgency which has endeared
> Rachmaninov to millions.” Reviewing the same recording in its Hatto
> incarnation--it was one of the few that had not been tampered with--he
> declared it “among the finest on record€¦above all, everything is vitally
> alive and freshly considered.” He went on to praise the soloist’s “clarity
> and verve that will astonish even this concerto’s most seasoned listeners.”
>

Farhan Malik escreveu:

"Donald Manildi has found a concrete example of a critic panning a CD when
> it first came out and then raving about it as a Hatto fake. The critic in
> question is Bryce Morrison, who in the latest issue of *Gramophone*
> claims that he "never heard any of the discs on which the epic Hatto
> deception was based." This claim is provably false as demonstrated below.
> It is well known that the Rachmaninoff 2nd and 3rd Concertos of Hatto are
> ripoffs of the performances by Yefim Bronfman on Sony. I have confirmed
> this for myself, comparing wav files of both and listening to the movements
> myself. I also can state as fact that there was no tempo manipulation or
> other monkey business involved with this Hatto release. The timings and
> tempos for each movement are identical on Hatto and Bronfman. Other than
> slightly changing the acoustic sound the Hatto is a direct ripoff of the
> Bronfman.
>
> In the September 1992 issue, Morrison reviews the Bronfman and writes that
> in Concerto No. 3 the pianist "operates at too low a voltage...he lacks the
> sort of angst or urgency that has endeared Rachmaninov to millions." He
> goes on to say "...I think you'll agree that this is hardly a case of how
> 'great things are done when men and mountains meet'." About Concerto No. 2,
> Morrison writes that Bronfman "sounds oddly unmoved by Rachmaninov's
> intensely slavonic idiom."
>
> Moving on to Morrison's review of the "Hatto" recordings of the same works
> in the February 2007 issue, he claims her Third Concerto to be "among the
> finest on record...the opening theme is given with a special sense of its
> Slavic melancholy...Above all, everything is vitally alive and freshly
> considered." Morrison goes on to praise the soloist's "clarity and verve
> that will astonish even this concerto's most seasoned listeners." And in
> Concerto No. 2, the pianist's "eloquence has the ease and naturalness of a
> born musician."
>
> Another example of someone trashing an original release then praising it
> as a Hatto fake comes to us courtesy of Tom Deacon. He originally trashed
> Matsuzawa's Chopin Etudes recording but later praised it in its Hatto
> incarnation. I have now compared the Hatto 75th Anniversary Edition release
> of the Chopin Etudes to the Matsuzawa recording. 17 of the 27 tracks on the
> Hatto are taken from Matsuzawa's disc. The one's that are NOT Matsuzawa are
> Op. 10 Nos. 2 and 6; Op. 25 Nos. 1 and 7-12; and Nouvelle Etude No. 1. Ten
> of the Matsuzawa tracks have some tempo manipulation, but in many cases it
> is minor and hardly noticeable (2 seconds or less). Seven Matwsuzawa tracks
> are copied wholesale without any digital manipulation.
>
> Of the original Matsuzawa release, Tom Deacon had this to say:
>
> Nothing could possibly equal the faceless, spineless, ever-so-tasteful
>> performances of Ms. Matsuzawa. She is the very model of Lily Tomlin's much
>> admired tasteful lady.
>>
>> Perhaps you should move to the Orient and get your fill of such niceness.
>>
>> But with Ms. Matsuzawa you must be thinking with some other part of your
>> anatomy than your brain.
>>
>> Faceless, typwriter, neat as a pin but utterly flaccid performances with
>> small, tiny poetic gestures added like so much rouge on the face of a
>> Russian doll.
>>
>
> About the Hatto Etudes Deacon had this to say (note that all but one of
> the Etudes he singles out is a confirmed Matsuzawa performance):
>
> My oh my, this is a beautiful recording of Chopin's music. The pieces flow
>> so naturally and so completely without precious effects that you might, for
>> a moment, think that there are no other ways of reading the music. Her
>> double notes are extraordinary. And yes, I know Lhevinne. But in the Octave
>> Etude she goes Lhevinne one better by playing the octaves so incredibly
>> smoothly that they seem to flow from her fingers. How on earth does she
>> manage that, I wonder? In Op. 10 No. 1 the right hand is fluent, flawless,
>> clear as a bell, but the real story is the LH, which carries the interest
>> of the piece anyway. The central episode in No. 3 is dramatic, but the
>> drama doesn't overwhelm the A section, either the first or second time
>> round. The C# minor, a knucklebuster if ever there was one, is played as a
>> true Presto, but punctuated with all kinds of wondrous LH details. The
>> first black key etude has fluttering RH detail, but again, it is the LH
>> which is truly eloquent. OK, the C major is not up to Friedman's inhuman
>> tempo, but it is still beautiful, and again with lovely LH melodic figures.
>> The A flat major, Op. 10 No. 10, restores all of Chopin's carefully notated
>> differenciation between one section and another, a veritable study in the
>> ability to vary detached sounds. And again, the LH carries the day.
>>
>> And so it goes all the way through. There are simply no weak performances
>> on this CD - CACD - 9243-2.
>>
>
> Having listened to several of these performances side by side I can assure
> you that speeding up or slowing down a track by a few seconds does not turn
> performances by a faceless, typewriter with small, tiny poetic gestures
> into the glorious artist described by Tom Deacon.
>

O que fica muito claro aí, além dos clichês óbvios de praxe na "crítica
musical", é o racismo e o sexismo do establishment. E note que não falo
como "etnomusicólogo", o que sugeriria colocar-me a priori num paraíso onde
nada disso existisse (e sabemos que existe). Volto ao texto do *Intelligent
Life*.

Alder has touched on something fundamental to our appreciation of
> performances. Do you experience “King Lear”, or Robert Stephens’or Paul
> Schofield’s Lear? It is a paradox that these masterpieces come mostly
> vividly to life bent through the prism of an almighty interpretative ego.
> And therein lies the trap. Although our knowledge of the performer enhances
> our aesthetic experience, it inevitably distorts our critical judgment.
>
> Neil Raymond also bought almost the entire collection of Hatto recordings.
> A venture capitalist from Montreal, he owns one of the largest private
> collections of classical CDs in the world. Raymond sees things differently
> from Alder. “One of the feelings I have is kind of personal
> self-condemnation,” he said. “So much of my reaction was based on a rooting
> interest in Joyce Hatto as an artist, her illness, the human-interest side
> of it. I, no less than the critics, had turned it into an artistic
> determination.”
>

Isso me lembra a palestra célebre de Chimamanda Adichie, "The Danger of a
Single Story". Outro, dentre os vários pontos importantes, é o fato de que
muitas dessas "piratarias" eram de fato criações originais, por trabalho de
montagem do produtor, o que é parte da linguagem do hip-hop, uma arte da
reprodutibilidade técnica, mas inaceitável no universo da "música de
concerto". *Intelligent Life* de novo:

But many of the ripped-off recordings, deprived of the halo effect of
> Hatto’s tragically uplifting story, now seem rather less impressive.
> According to Gregor Benko, co-founder of the International Piano Archives
> in Maryland: “A few of the pirated performances were excellent or superior.
> Most of them, the majority of them, however, were middle of the road,
> chrome-plated conservatory graduate style delineations of the text, without
> much interpretation, personality or musical soul”.
>
> It turns out that some of the most widely acclaimed Hatto performances
> were lifted from several sources and spliced together by Mr
> Barrington-Coupe. An American collector and pianophile, Farhan Malik, has
> spent months deconstructing the forgeries. “In some cases the speeding up
> really does improve a performance”, he tells me. “I will give you an
> example: the Chopin Godowsky "Fourth Etude". That’s Carlo Grante. It’s
> really much better than the original Carlo Grante. Carlo Grante has to slow
> down for the middle section because it’s more difficult. But Joyce Hatto
> doesn’t.” Likewise, Alexander Ghindin’s recording of the Mendelssohn
> Rachmaninoff Scherzo from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has been sped up by
> 4.23%. “The Hatto really is much more impressive”.
>
> Mr Malik has the greatest admiration for Hatto’s "Brahms Paganini
> Variations". All but eight of the variations are lifted from Lilya
> Zilberstein on Deutsche Gramophone--an excellent recording in its own
> right. Mr Barrington-Coupe has taken six variations from Matti Raekallio on
> Ondine, and two variations from Evgeny Kissin on BMG. “These substitutions
> are in all cases an improvement over Zilberstein in those variations," says
> Mr Malik, "Hatto has basically removed much of the unevenness and created a
> superb rendition”.
>
> Mr Malik considers this hybrid performance “a masterpiece”. When I told
> William Barrington-Coupe about this verdict he seemed pleased. He told me
> he was sure that people would still be listening to the Hatto "Brahms
> Paganini Variations" in 50 years time.
>

Abraço,

Carlos


2014-10-01 9:42 GMT-03:00 Hugo Leonardo Ribeiro hugoleo75 em gmail.com
[etnomusicologiabr] <etnomusicologiabr em yahoogrupos.com.br>:

>
>
> Acabei de assistir. Muito legal.
> Valeu Palombini.
>
-------------- Próxima Parte ----------
Um anexo em HTML foi limpo...
URL: <http://www.listas.unicamp.br/pipermail/anppom-l/attachments/20141001/3af742af/attachment.html>