Joyce Hatto Piano Recording Hoax

[gerdbonk]

I stumbled across this story today. It appears that Joyce Hatto (1928 - 2006), a classical pianist who produced, in her last cancer-ridden years, an astounding output of critically acclaimed (though not without skepticism) recordings, may not have actually played on them.

Gramophone Article: Masterpieces Or Fakes? The Joyce Hatto Scandal

But at the same time as the cult of Hatto was burgeoning, there were persistent rumours on the internet as to the true origins of the recordings. How, wondered the doubters, could one woman – especially one who had battled cancer for many years – have mastered a range of repertoire and recorded a catalogue that arguably makes her more prolific than even the Richters and the Ashkenazys....

Several days ago, another Gramophone critic was contacted by a reader who had put a Hatto Liszt CD – the 12 Transcendental Studies – into his computer to listen to, and something awfully strange happened. His computer's player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszts, but not a Hatto recording. Instead, his display suggested that the disc was one on BIS Records, by the pianist Lászlo Simon. Mystified, our critic checked his Hatto disc against the actual Simon recording, and to his amazement they sounded exactly the same.

Technical analysis of recordings by Pristine Audio: Joyce Hatto - The Ultimate Recording Hoax. Includes playable audio comparisons.

I was immediately suspicous about the sound of the second track on the 'Hatto' CD - it didn't sound like a straight CD copy; rather it had some of the smearing and blurring you'd expect from a poor MP3.

In fact, the reason for this is that the original, by Carlo Grante, had been subjected to more than 15% of time stretching manipulation - way over the 3-4% that most software is designed to achieve without audible flaws. When we compress the original Grante to match the already time-compressed Hatto, once again a perfect match is found.

To find fakery on one CD seems evidence enough. To find it so quickly and easily on a second, picked at random from the Hatto catalogue, seems to offer the final proof of what may turn out to be the greatest recording hoax ever perpetrated on the music-loving public

The mastering engineer on these Hatto CDs, Roger Chatterton of Kite Recording Studio, replies to Pristine Audio, claiming ignorance:

"As I mentioned to you today, at all times I was acting in good faith, and was no way aware of any attempts to create bogus claims or recordings- I was just the poor sound engineer, and William B-Coupe [Hatto's husband] was the client at my studio. I acted in good faith with all the masters presented to me, and I had no reason or suspicion to doubt their provenance."

Technical analysis of performances by The AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music: Purely coincidental? Joyce Hatto and Chopin's Mazurkas. The figures noted below are visual 'timescapes' which they purport chart relative timing differences between piano performances.

According to the booklet accompaying the CDs, the recordings were made at Concert Artist Studios, Cambridge, on 27 April 1997 and 19 March 2004, though the slipcase changes the latter date to December 2005; the Concert Artists website adds the information that the recording was 'revised by Joyce Hatto shortly before she died' and 'completely remastered'. But all this is puzzling, because what Figure 3 shows is that this recording of Op. 68 No. 3 is virtually indistinguishable from that on a commercial recording credited to Eugen Indjic....

Nor is it just Op. 68 No. 3 which exhibits this apparent identity: Figure 4 shows the Mazurka Op. 17 No. 4, and again the Hatto and Indjic recordings are virtually indistinguishable.

Concert Artist/Fidelio Recordings (Hatto's label)

At Concert Artist we have received hundreds of emails, letters and postcards. Many of these are in depth appreciations of Joyce Hatto’s long and painful struggle to overcome and fight back against a vicious and pernicious invading cancer. Not of all of these personal letters were connected with her music. Many ordinary people, not associated with music not, perhaps, ever having listened to a Beethoven Sonata in their lives, were moved and given hope for their own problems after hearing various radio interviews and long articles broadcast, or published, particularly from New Zealand and the United States.

A response by her husband and producer, William Barrington-Coupe: My wife's virtuoso recordings are genuine. He says that specific recordings identified as copies are no longer being distributed.

He disputed the accuracy of the expert analysis of the CDs saying "the evidence that they rely on isn't proven – it would have been possible to change the speed of the recordings until they matched".

But he admitted: "I cannot explain some of the things that they say are there."

I'm going to guess that the elderly Mr. Barrington-Coupe is an analog gentleman who had no idea how analysis by current digital technology could expose his scam.

 

[strathmeyer]

Time stretching manipulation? I'm skeptical 'bout somethin'.

 

[gerdbonk]

Skeptical that an audio recording can be time-stretched?

 

[Orthoptera]

What an incredible story: the evidence on the Pristine Audio website seems absolutely damning. I found this comment interesting (from Pristine Audio): "We have yet to investigate a Hatto recording that has not proved to be a hoax." Now it comes down to who knew.
I am trying to think of another art/genre besides classical music where someone could get away with something like this: maybe photography, as long as one chose little-known photographers.

 

[ChristineR]

Orthoptera, when I read your post something came to mind immediately, the Lewis Hine prints by Walter Benjamin.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200306/woodward

There does not seem to be a good free summary online anywhere, but the jist of it is that someone was making "lifetime prints" of a dead photographer. Prints that were created by the photographer himself are more valuable to collectors; Lewis Hine printed relatively few of his own negatives.

Not exactly the same, but there are some parallels.

 

[NotJesus]

I've been following the Joyce Hatto story pretty closely. It's fascinating.

It appears that Hatto was a legitimate pianist (but far from a household name) with an active career up until about 1976. There's a recording of her playing a Bax piece, made in the early 70's, which is probably legit. In 1976 she became ill with cancer and retired from playing in public. The recordings released under her name are supposed to have been made beginning in 1989. She died last year.

There have been a few skeptical voices raised before this story broke. People have wondered how this supposedly sickly woman could have produced over 100 recordings over a wide range of repertoire in a fairly short space of time. And some have suggested that the playing style varies so much from disk to disk that they couldn't all be the work of the same pianist.

Two really interesting questions are: What was the motive? How deeply was Joyce Hatto herself involved?

As a money-making scheme it seems crazy -- Lots of risk for too small a payoff. Most classical disks aren't big sellers, especially small-label releases of pianists most people haven't heard of. There was no way to predict that the critical response would be so positive and generate healthy sales. Was this just a twisted vanity project? An attempt to build a phony legacy for a musician who'd had her career cut short?

And did Joyce Hatto knowingly participate or was it all her husband's work? Maybe she was so ill that she wasn't aware of what was going on. Maybe she did do some work in the recording studio but the results were unusable and, rather than tell her this, Barrington-Coupe decided to resort to fakery. Not very likely but possible.

If anyone wants to learn more, there's a long but interesting article here by Christopher Howell, who reviewed some of the Hatto disks and had some correspondence with Barrington-Coupe and (the real?) Joyce Hatto.

 

[gerdbonk]

If anyone wants to learn more, there's a long but interesting article here by Christopher Howell, who reviewed some of the Hatto disks and had some correspondence with Barrington-Coupe and (the real?) Joyce Hatto.

Thanks for that link. In Howell's story and in the appended comments from William Hedley and Jeremy Nicholas, who also had contact with Hatto and/or Barrington-Coupe, there is a sense of respect and sadness for these two (more for Hatto than B-C) that I can appreciate but I do not necessarily share. Reading between the lines of the duo's correspondence with Howell you can see the scammer's technique of cultivating an emotional connection with someone who might provide a shield of respectability to their plot. I am ready to forgive Hatto if it proves she was a doddering innocent. It may be sad that her career came to this, but, as Nicholas mentions, there are some outstanding musicians on these recordings who are not being given their due.

I am a hobbyist musician and recordist, no expert and certainly no connoisseur of classical music. My interest in this was piqued by the discovery method mentioned in the Gramophone article, where the automatic song identity function in the user's computer revealed the recording was something other than what the CD package said it was. I think the subsequent digital analysis cuts through what might have been years of squabbling among doubters and supporters had this technology not been available.

 

[boloboffin]

There's a movie in all of this.

 

[SusanB-M1]

This is a subject that has come up for discussion on BBC Radio 3 several times just recently and has also been discussed on the associated MBs.

 

[ChristineR]

I have a theory about all this, which is quite possibly all wrong, but if right it would make a great story.

Joyce Hatto got cancer, and could no longer perform publicly because of the pain and her physical appearance, but she continued to play privately. When cheap digital recording technology became common, she was recorded. This much is all true (according to my theory).

But she wasn't that good. She'd been sick for decades by this time, so who can be surprised if she made a lot of errors? But her husband and friends continued to praise her playing beyond what it would have merited under normal circumstances.

At some point her husband give up on the retakes and edits and just started substituting whichever performances that thought matched her actual playing the best. (She seems to take a lot of pieces much faster than the average pianist.)

Unfortunately, all this fakery must have happened before they started selling the recordings, because it seems that none of her post-illness recordings are legitimate. Even if it seemed harmless at first, the opportunity to sell the fakes should have put a stop to it right there....

 

[NotJesus]

An update today from Gramophone magazine. William Barrington-Coupe has sent a (sort of) confession to Robert von Bahr, the head of BIS Records. B-C says he did it all for love of his sick wife (boo hoo) and that he got started because he needed material to patch up Joyce's recordings which were marred by her groans of pain (sob).

He's still not giving out anything close to the full truth. The recordings that have been identified as rip-offs are not Hatto patched with bits of someone else. They're all 100% someone else.

Robert von Bahr says he's not likely to pursue legal action. I have a feeling that some of the bigger labels with more money for things like teams of lawyers may not be so forgiving.

 

[gerdbonk]

I think we saw this coming.

He says he's not inclined to provide a full list of original recording sources:

When asked to do this, Barrington-Coupe replied that he didn’t want to go down that road, adding, “I’m tired, I’m not very well. I’ve closed the operation down, I’ve had the stock completely destroyed, and I’m not producing any more. Now I just want a little bit of peace.”

How successful has the "I'm tired, I'm not very well, I just want a bit of peace" defense been in the courts?

 

[tkingdoll]

I have a theory about all this, which is quite possibly all wrong, but if right it would make a great story.

Joyce Hatto got cancer, and could no longer perform publicly because of the pain and her physical appearance, but she continued to play privately. When cheap digital recording technology became common, she was recorded. This much is all true (according to my theory).

But she wasn't that good. She'd been sick for decades by this time, so who can be surprised if she made a lot of errors? But her husband and friends continued to praise her playing beyond what it would have merited under normal circumstances.

At some point her husband give up on the retakes and edits and just started substituting whichever performances that thought matched her actual playing the best. (She seems to take a lot of pieces much faster than the average pianist.)

Unfortunately, all this fakery must have happened before they started selling the recordings, because it seems that none of her post-illness recordings are legitimate. Even if it seemed harmless at first, the opportunity to sell the fakes should have put a stop to it right there....

Or...well, being ill is expensive. And this is a way to make a fast buck, either for care during her illness, or to pay care-related bills after her death.

It's perfectly possible that the pianist herself was party to the deception. It's also possible that she agreed to exploit her illness to sell recordings via the sympathy vote, or that that was her husband's motivation without her knowledge.

Sorry to be cynical, but all possibilities should be considered here, not just that this was done out of kindness to a dying woman's feelings.

 

[NotJesus]

It's perfectly possible that the pianist herself was party to the deception. It's also possible that she agreed to exploit her illness to sell recordings via the sympathy vote, or that that was her husband's motivation without her knowledge.

One recording that suggests she might have been in on it is "her" recording of Rachmaninov's 2nd and 3rd piano concertos with something called the National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra conducted by one Rene Kohler. Both the name of the orchestra and the name of the conductor appear to be fictitious. It's not unheard of for an orchestra to work under an assumed name for contractual reasons, or it may simply be a pickup group hired for the occasion. Maestro "Kohler" might have his own reasons for using a pseudonym. But if any recording sessions actually took place, there must be a large number of musicians who were there and could confirm this. So far no one has stepped forward to say, "Yes, I was hired for her Rachmaninov concerto sessions and we really did play the pieces." And if no recording sessions took place, Joyce Hatto must have been:

A) Aware of the fraud
B) Unaware that this recording had been released
C) So far gone with dementia that she couldn't remember whether the sessions had really happened or not
D) Already dead
E) (or insert other farfetched explanation here)

By the way, this record might be one that causes major legal problems for Barrington-Coupe. It was stolen from a recording by Yefim Bronfman and Esa-Pekka Salonen on Sony Classical -- a big label.

B-C might have been better advised to leave those concertos alone.

 

[NotJesus]

I just read a really terrible article by one Ann McFerran, from the Sunday Times. McFerran presents the Barrington-Coupe sob story (with added improbable flourishes) with minimal comment and no hard questions, and displays an appalling ignorance of the whole affair, and of the classical music business in general. The end of the artiicle, where she tries to draw parallels with cases of "borrowing" or false attribution from the 18th century, is particularly wretched.

I was going to post a link but frankly, I don't want to encourage anyone to read this crap.