Joyce Hatto - Fraud

Fraud

In Hatto's last years, more than 100 recordings falsely attributed to her appeared. The repertoire represented on the CDs included the complete sonatas of Beethoven, Mozart and Prokofiev, concertos by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Mendelssohn, and most of Chopin's compositions, along with rarer works such as the complete Godowsky Chopin Studies. The recordings were released, along with piano recordings falsely attributed to the late Sergio Fiorentino, by the English label Concert Artist Recordings, run by Hatto's husband William Barrington-Coupe, who had a long history in the record industry. To go along with the release of these 'Hatto' recordings, stories began to be spread by Barrington-Coupe about his wife's contacts in the distant past with many of the greatest musicians of the mid-twentieth century, all by then dead; even the distinguished critic Neville Cardus had been dazzled by her playing, according to a story found in one obituary.

From 2003 onwards, the recordings attributed to Hatto began to receive enthusiastic praise from a small number of participants on various Usenet groups, mailing lists, and web forums, sparked by a blind-listening test in December 2002 posted on ThePiano Yahoo! group featuring a recording under Hatto's name of Liszt's Mephisto Waltz. Specialised record review magazines and websites, such as Gramophone, MusicWeb and Classics Today, as well as newspapers such as The Boston Globe, eventually discovered Hatto, reviewed the recordings (with mostly very favourable notices), and published interviews and appreciations of her career; in one case, she was described as "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of." Those praising the recordings included Tom Deacon, a former record producer for Philips, who produced that label's Great Pianists of the 20th Century series and was so fooled he praised and damned the same recording thinking that one was by Hatto and the other by Matsuzawa; Bryce Morrison, a long-time reviewer for Gramophone; Jed Distler, a reviewer for "Gramophone" and Classics Today; Ateş Orga, a music critic who also wrote some of the liner notes for Concert Artist, as well as an obituary; and Ivan Davis, a well-known professional pianist.

In May 2005, the musicologist Marc-André Roberge reported on the Yahoo! Godowsky group that, in Hatto's version of the Chopin-Godowsky Studies on the Concert Artist label, a misreading of a chord was identical to one on the Carlo Grante recording (AIR-CD-9092, released 1993). However, this curious coincidence did not prompt Roberge (or others) to investigate further, and verification of the copying from the Grante disc only occurred in 2007.

In early 2006, doubts about various aspects of Hatto's recording output were expressed, both in the Rec.music.classical.recordings Usenet Group and, following the publication of a lengthy appreciation of Hatto in the March issue of Gramophone, by readers of that magazine. In particular, some found it hard to believe that a pianist who had not performed in public for decades and was said to be fighting cancer should produce in her old age a vast number of recordings, all apparently of high quality. It also proved difficult to confirm any of the details of the recordings made with orchestra, including even the existence of the conductor credited. The doubters were vigorously countered, most publicly by critic Jeremy Nicholas who, in the July 2006 issue of Gramophone, challenged unnamed sceptics to substantiate their accusations by providing evidence that would "stand up in a court of law". Nicholas's challenge was not taken up, and in December, Radio New Zealand was able, in all innocence, to re-broadcast its hour-long programme of glowing appreciation of the Concert Artist Hatto CDs. This programme included excerpts from a telephone interview with Hatto herself, conducted on April 6, 2006, in which she said nothing to dispel the presenter's assumption that she was the sole pianist on all the CDs.

The favourable reviews and publicity generated substantial sales for the Concert Artist CDs: in 2006, one online retailer did £50,000 worth of business with Barrington-Coupe. Barrington-Coupe himself claimed to have sold 3051 Hatto CDs in 2005 and 2006, and 5500 from 2007 up to February 2009, and that he had made a "thumping great loss" on them.

Hatto died on 29 June 2006 in Cambridge, England.