A different kind of hoax

If your wife is dying from cancer and happens to be a former concert pianist what do you do? Why, of course, you release some of her recordings and win her as much acclaim as you can for her work. And that’s exactly what her husband did. On a private label the husband of Joyce Hatto publishes his wife playing pieces of well known classical music. And as a critic in the Boston Globe put it in 2005 ‘[she is] the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of.’

At least that’s how it should have gone. But with a little help from iTunes, things took a slightly different direction. As gramophone.co.uk first reported, a listener of Hattos sat down in front of his computer and was in for a bit of a surprise: the music was recognised as a recording of Liszt – as it indeed said on the cover of the disc. But the name that appeared on the screen was not of the female virtuoso as expected, but a pianist by the name László Simon.

How is it, people had previously asked, that a previously unknown artist that stopped performing publicly more than three decades ago, and while battling with cancer, can suddenly start to produce such great music? The sad, but honest truth is that she couldn’t (or at any rate didn’t). It was all one big scam from beginning to end.

Take one piece of good classical music alter the pace, re-master it and give it out under the name of Joyce Hatto. Rinse and repeat. All of a sudden you have an amazing collection of work praised for its brilliance – the only problem is the name on the cover. A name that did not in fact play the music…

As for the reasons for publishing the music under his wife’s name not a lot is known. William Barrington-Coupe still claims all recordings are genuine and played by his late wife, but the evidence supporting his claim has yet to be presented. Meanwhile the list of musicians recognised on the Hatto CDs is still growing.

Side by side comparison of some of the pieces can be heard at Pristine Audio.