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Shades of Milli Vanilli, albeit on a more grandiose scale... so to speak.

This article provides some more detail. Apparently the name of a conductor and an entire orchestra were faked for concerto recordings!

Stereophile

I have to laugh...

This goes to show how simple it is to fake a recording today using off-the-shelf software. I'm glad I don't go out and purchase a lot of music CDs.

So from now on, we can no longer post just recordings of us playing. We will have to use You-Tube, or some other means to show a full video of the performance! :p

John

Interesting article but the statistics are wrong. A correlation of .999 between sets of 54 independent observations would occur by chance less than one in 10,000 times, not 1 in a thousand. It is probably even less than that, the result came out at p<.0001. One question of course is how highly correlated two performances of the same pieces of music by different performers are in general and how different this correlation would be from that, since we would expect some relationship. I would bet this .999 correlation is substantially and significantly higher.

Sophia

The statement at the website seems to be a bit dodgy:

http://concertartistrecordings.com/

Maybe my Safari browser doesn't like that website, but nothing much is coming up.

It's working for me P*D.... then again, I'm using Explorer.

Matt

Ah, another Mac user! There are several websites I visit that don't like Safari so would suggest Firefox.

Neville Cardus is a critic I respect. It's a pity that Hatto's husband apparently felt the need to defraud the public with false representations of his wife's playing.

William Barrington-Coupe:

" My wife's virtuoso recordings are genuine".

Speaking at his home in Royston, Herts, Mr Barrington-Coupe, 76, said: "She was the sole pianist on those recordings. I was there at all the important sessions, I was the engineer on the jobs and I take full responsibility for everything released on my label Concert Artist".


from telegraph.co.uk


Mel

As well you should take responsibility...

The British press have been caught with their collective pants down and the Americans are going to make a meal of it.

Last September, I well remember a BBC "Building a Library" review of the Chopin Etudes and Joyce Hatto's "recording" came a very close second to Pollini's overall, with several Etudes actually being preferred to Pollini's.

Now I am very fascinated to find out who Pollini's main rival really was. Could it have been himself?

Question: Is it possible for an 80 piece orchestra to fit into a modest home recording studio?

Answer: Yes, if it arrives in a jewel case.


Mel

It's interesting that Barrington-Coupe never disloses, nor indicated he will disclose, any proof of those sessions. He's seems unwilling to produce, in the flesh, one orchestra player or one recording engineer that was involved in the alleged recordings.

Curious.

So that's how he did it...

This is an excerpt from the following article by Ates Orga on the musicweb site listed below, written apparently before recent events blew this whole thing open. I hope it's ok to post a short excerpt if credited. It is almost eerie in its description of the difficulty involved in finding information that can be corroborated about her. I thought this was fascinating.

http://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2006/Jan06/Hatto_Orga_1.htm

"Finding out anything about Joyce, anything corroborative, is a challenge. Her lack of vanity, self-effacement, and desire to be behind the composer, the music, the CD, to be the medium rather than the personality, has over the years created an effective information block. Odd programmes and advertisements surface from time to time. And there’s the standard management biography. But otherwise one hunts vainly for information. No dictionary or handbook entries. Virtually no third-party references. Few readily accessible reviews from her concert days (she’s never kept press cuttings). Her Concert Artist CDs however, offering an in-depth picture of her (present day) strengths and breadth, have helped redress the balance somewhat, attracting notice in Europe and America."

Indeed they have attracted notice.

Sophia

I wonder if the other recordings on that label are the artists they purport to be.

The pianist playing the Chopin Etudes has been identified. He is a Japanese pianist: Matsugawa or something close to that name. Anyone has the Mozart Sonatas and the Chopin Etudes ??? I would like to have a hint....

they updated wiki on this and it has a list of recordings in question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Hatto

This whole thing is truly incredible - how come I haven't heard of her before??