Joyce Hatto - Early Life and Early Career

Early Life and Early Career

Joyce Hatto was born in St John's Wood, North London, her father was an antique dealer and piano enthusiast. As a promising young professional, she played at a large number of concerts in London and throughout Britain and Europe, beginning in the 1950s. There were concertos (accompanied by the Boyd Neel, Haydn and London Symphony Orchestras and many others), solo recitals at the Wigmore and Queen Elizabeth Halls and elsewhere, as well as (in the late 1960s and early 1970s) concerts by "pupils of Joyce Hatto": she supplemented her earnings with work as a répétiteur for the London Philharmonic Choir, working under such conductors as Sir Thomas Beecham and Victor de Sabata; and as a piano teacher, both privately and at schools including Crofton Grange, a girls' boarding school in Hertfordshire. She was also active in the recording studios, for several companies such as Saga Records, in England, Germany (Hamburg) and Paris.