I believe that recording was particularly doctored in an irregular manner in order to obfuscate its origins as far as possible, for that very reason.

Some more info can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Hatto and I see that some more comparisons are now posted on the Pristine Audio website.

If it's proving this easy to find recordings that are essentially identical any possibility of coincidence has clearly evaporated.

We can only wonder at the motives.

Nick

Or:

It was an intervention inspired by reading Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and taking substantial quantities of psychotropic drugs simultaneously but not necessarily at the same time

or:

(as you suggested elsewhere) it's a classic Situationist performance

or:

it was a cheesy con (I wonder how true the 'biography' of Joyce Hatto's early years including her adventures behind the 'Iron Curtain', her meetings with Cortot, Haskil & Richter, her playing the Hammerklavier for Furtwängler, Tippett telling her she should devote herself to Bach etc. etc. is? Perhaps as true as the distastefully manipulative 'biography' of René Köhler, the phantom conductor: surviving the Warsaw Ghetto, brilliant pianist left hand destroyed by a Nazi jackboot, interned by the Soviets for 15 years, ahem)

or:

Think Hitchcock. Barrington-Coupe (crazy name, crazy guy) has been cross-dressing for decades as Joyce Hatto.

Interestinglyish, it seems to have been Jed Distler who made the Transcendental Etudes discovery. Does make you wonder about the whole 'pianophile' business - Jed Distler, Bryce Morrison, Jeremy Nicholas.

Ho, Hum.

A couple of links:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article1398283.ece

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/17/npianist17.xml

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/16/news/hatto.php

The Beeb, for some reason, seems not to have noticed yet.

The IHT article, in some ways the most interesting, as it contains a few quotes from Nichols defending his Gramophone piece - why should he have asked any questions - you don't. And it is true - how do I know that my recording of Mackerras playing Kata really is. Well, I've heard him do Janacek in the opera house and the concert hall (and do it stunningly well), why on earth would I question, the same could be said of any number of other artists in my collection. But with Hatto there were questions. Why had some recordings so few technical inconsistencies (despite being over many years), while others so many. How was she able to do so much while battling illness. When Abbado was very ill a few years back his output dropped marked, similarly Mackerras didn't do as much when he developed problems with one of his arms - and now, at 80 he doesn't perform the biggest works and is slightly cutting back on his workaholic schedule. Brendel has given up the Hammerklavier.

However, those of use who asked any such question (and from memory, most of us who did so, were pretty tactful about it, given the rather unpleasant vitriol of some of her supporters), were criticised rather harshly. I remember Nichols letter in Gramophone a few months later where all the naysayers were pretty well branded as evil - and at the time it did seem that some of the criticism was a little unpleasant (I don't think I actually read anything into the above questions at the time - they just struck me as odd, my main complaint was that I found the music thoroughly unremarkable).

I suppose more will come out over the coming months and I, like, I assume many others, am eager to learn the extent to which Hatto was involved - I find it difficult to believe she never listened to any of the discs she made - which I suppose leaves options that she was either a willing party, or that her producer cynically manipulated her.

Something else occurred to me the last night. I remembered that in the original CD Review segment, McGregor stated that he'd contacted Concert Artists to ask for some discs to play but they had refused to send any (because they'd sent CDs to the BBC before and none had ever been played). At the time it struck me as a little petulant but nothing more (and I suppose understandable). Now, however, I wonder if he was concerned that an excess of publicity might lead to what has happened in the last couple of days.


regards, Tam

The main BBC site may not have yet picked up on the story but it is on the BBC Music Mag site.

http://www.bbcmusicmagazine.com/newsread.asp?id=27286

Julien, just in case it wasn't clear (and reading back I'm not sure it was), I very much agree that Nicholas should have been asking the questions.


Bobby, thanks for the link to BBC Music - there's an interesting quote there from Robert von Bahr (managing director of BIS):



regards, Tam

That's exactly what I thought. I don't know anything about the man (though I admire his company for the recordings I own), but to respond in such a gentlemanly way (something I thought was almost gone from business) is worthy of respect.

regards, Tam

Love?

This sad story (if that is what it is, rather than something merely grubby) reminds me of the novel How the Dead Live, by Derek Raymond. A deeply moving book - has anybody else here read it?