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| February | 17 |
| 2007 |
This is one of the most extraordinary stories I have ever come across.
As a regular reader of Gramophone, I have followed with some awe their reviews of the unknown British pianist Joyce Hatto. Her story seemed incredible: totally off the radar, battling cancer, she made an extensive series of recordings across a hugely varied repertoire. At the end of her life - she died last June - her husband released them, to reviews which were beyond raves. I've been meaning to get hold of some of the recordings for some time.
Now, it seems, it might indeed be an incredible story - literally so, because it turns out that the recordings might be fakes. This website reveals what appears to be incontrovertible evidence that at least some of the recordings are not by Joyce Hatto. As Gramophone puts it:
Several days ago, another Gramophone critic decided to listen to a Hatto Liszt CD, of the 12 Transcendental Studies. He put the disc into his computer to listen, and something awfully strange happened. His computer's player identified the disc as, yes, the Liszt, 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.In then went a recording of Hatto playing two Rachmaninov Piano Concertos and, sure enough, his computer's CD player listed it as another – by Yefim Bronfman, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, on Sony. Again, the critic compared, and again he could hear no difference.
Gramophone then sent the Hatto and the Simon Liszt recordings to an audio expert, Pristine Audio’s Andrew Rose, who scientifically checked the soundwaves of each recording. They matched. “Without a shadow of a doubt,†reported Rose, “10 of the tracks on the Liszt disc are identical to those on the Simon.†Of the remaining two, he now feels that he has identified a further one – which he identified as being, again “without a shadow of a doubt†from a CD entitled “Nojima Plays Lisztâ€, a 1993 release from Reference Recordings. Furthermore, his partner – who is based elsewhere with his own equipment – agrees.
More astonishing revelations were to come.
Read the whole thing for those extraordinary revelations.
I am suitably gobsmacked.
UPDATE: Jessica Duchen is similarly amazed. And it's in The Times.
MessageSpace
4 points:
1) No one noticed this before? I find this surprising in an age when everyone and her dog rips her CDs.
2) If he had not put the CD in his computer would anyone have noticed? My guess is that it would have been an awfully long time before anyone did. I'm convinced that most "aficionados" haven't got a clue despite all the ridiculous pretensions. In this the world of music, classical and jazz, is very much like the worlds of wine and food and art. They all attract a large number of the worst kind of poseurs and frauds. No pretensions with the real greats: Charlie Parker's favourite listening at home was Bunny Berrigan's On A Slow Boat to China; Stan Getz never listened to jazz outside of work, much preferring classical music.
Simon Rattle does it best though: "That is the problem with Brit Art, with artists like Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and the others. I believe that much of this English, very biographically-oriented art is bullshit."
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,780436,00.html
3) It's not as if Hatto was a complete unknown. She had been praised by famous conductor and anti-Semite, Wilhelm Furtwaengler (may his name be erased from the Book of Memory), had performed extensively on the concert stage and had been taught by Serge Krish. Why did she need to do this? Was she in on the fraud? Did no one bother matching up her reputation as a concert pianist and a recording artist?
4) "Gramophone then sent the Hatto and the Simon Liszt recordings to an audio expert, Pristine Audio’s Andrew Rose, who scientifically checked the soundwaves of each recording."
He could have saved himself the trouble and bought a simple computer program instead.
"Bunny Berrigan's On A Slow Boat to China"
Correction: Kay Kyser's On A Slow Boat to China
Now that makes much more sense.
Not completely a fake, presumably. She played concerts in front of audiences and was never mistaken for Mrs Mills. My guess is that in the years of her illness she was unable to reach her former heights and she and/or those around her conceived this imposture in order to protect her reputation. If so, it would be a sad tale.
As Joshua says, it does call into question the judgement and discrimination of 'experts'. Rather like those blind taste tests of wine, when it turns out that experts can't tell white from red.
To be fair, at least one expert expressed doubts that the recordings were by the same pianist, which is why Jeremy Nicholas issued his challenge in the first place.
And it's not as though the recordings that were ripped off were especially well known - I'm sure they're wonderful players, but I'd never actually heard of Messrs Simon and Nojima before reading this piece, and I'm far from an ignoramus when it comes to piano CDs.
Quite apart from anything else, unless they were extremely familiar with the ripped-off recording in question and could recognise it immediately (which seems unlikely, given the relative obscurity of most of the recordings cited so far), why would a critic assume that it was anything other than what it claimed to be? It's not as though record labels are in the habit of issuing CDs under false names - indeed, this may well be a genuinely unprecedented case.