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In Reply to: RE: Poppycock. posted by rbolaw on October 28, 2011 at 07:12:35
He praised the recordings that were offered under her name. Later the operation was unmasked as a folie a deux, but no one noted that the selection of recordings was superb.
P.A.
Follow Ups:
Richard Dyer of the Globe was one of several critics duped into believing that nearly all the most famous solo and concerto piano repertoire from Bach to Messiaen had been recorded by Hatto on more than 109 CDs while she was suffering from terminal ovarian cancer. He wrote, "Joyce Hatto must be the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of."This is a classic example of a critic making a statement without having researched the subject matter thoroughly enough to know what he is talking about. In fact, it's not unlikely that Hatto and her husband concocted the fraud mainly to expose the shortcomings of such critics.
Edits: 10/28/11
It's really a lot to ask of any critic that he be able to identify, based solely on listening to a recording, a specific pianist. I certainly can't do it - can you? I do a little better with string players, particularly cellists, but that's because a) I'm a cellist and b) I find stringed instruments more distinctive in sound than pianos, so there are more "clues", if you will. Even so, there are plenty of cellists who I couldn't pick out of an aural lineup.
The problem in the Hatto case was that there were critics (as referenced in another posting) who praised Hatto's recordings, after originally disliking those same recordings with the original (correct) attribution.
The truth is, there is no way I can blame critics for not being able to listen to a Hatto CD and say, "that's identical to Mr. X from 9 years ago, only 7 percent faster" (the Hatto CDs were speed manipulated). If they listened to many Hatto CDs, they should have been able to tell they used different pianos and recording venues, which is inconsistent with Hatto's story, but I can't blame them for not bothering to do that.
But accepting the ridiculous Hatto back story at face value was a pretty silly and ignorant thing to do. An old, frail, dying woman, or for that matter, a young, healthy man, is not going to be able to record the entire piano repertoire brilliantly in a handful of years. Or at least the critics should have been suspicious and looked more closely into the tales Hatto and her husband were telling.
Some of them were also not speed manipulated - I don't know what the exact proportion was.
True. Even more clever IMO was Barrington-Coupe's decision to mix and match, splicing in different recordings within a single recording, a single piece, or even within a single movement. Of course, he didn't always bother to do that, either. But I understand he used the speed-manipulating software quite often. I suppose one could create one's ideal performance Dr. Frankenstein-style through digital manipulation, something at least one poster here thinks is already SOP in some places.
My recollection is that the fraud came to light because a reviewer put a CD in his iMac to listen to as he worked on something else, and iTunes queried CDDB, which then deduced the proper ID of the recording by its almost-unique combination of exact track lengths.
So the critic saw iTunes ID'ing the Joyce Hatto CD as the one that had been copied by her husband. This would not have happened if the tracks had been sped up. (Yes, I know, had he sped up parts and then slowed down others, he might have hit the same total time, but, I doubt he could do it to the 75th of a second, and on every track, which I believe is how CDDB works.)
But as far as their doing it to embarrass the critics, I dunno. I think it more likely that they both felt that they had not gotten their just desserts, and wanted fame and money.
JM
John-
You may be right, but I don't think Ms. Hatto and her husband and "producer", William Barrington-Coupe, made a great deal of money. That's pretty hard to do selling classical CDs on a one-man label (right, John?).
Hatto got some very negative reviews during her undistinguished and short performing career, and it's clear from what she and (especially) her husband had to say in interviews they resented it greatly. They went to great lengths to bamboozle certain critics, including Bryce Morrison, whom Chris mentions.
They also made up elaborate and ridiculous stories of important musicians Hatto allegedly worked with or knew, and even an elaborate biography for Rene Kohler, the fictional conductor in her concerto recordings. All of which was swallowed whole by many gullible critics, much to the couple's delight, I'm sure.
I guess it's like embezzlers: most of them would not get caught if they settled for a smaller amount and kept their tracks covered. Instead, most keep at it too long, and get sloppy, lazy, and: caught.
There was a legal secretary in Providence who redecorated her apartment extravagantly and bought hubby a Porsche. She eventually ran out of distant relatives to inherit from, shall we say.
I helped represent a credit union who had a key employee who was in charge of reconciling overnight turnovers. Many smaller bank-shaped financial institutions have deals whereby they lend their free cash overnight to the larger financial institution it is on deposit with anyway, om the theory that having $20 million on deposit 12 hours a day is like having $10 million on deposit 24 hours a day, or at least that was the way it was explained to me. I really didn't need to know that, I just needed to write the sentencing memo to uphold the credit union's end of the turnover and restitution bargain. The bank examiners got involved because the institution on the other end of the overnight deal was federally regulated. The scuttlebutt was that those guys were pretty wigged out, and seemed to think that if the perp had just stopped doing it and lived a quiet lifestyle, it would have just been unexplained and inexplicable.
So, yeah, Joyce Hatto, more than 100 CDs. That should have been a tipoff right there. Like the embezzlers, Hatto & Co. just couldn't stop.
To take a name at random, Stephen Kovacevich has 91 in-print CDs from a 50-year uninterrupted career, and I bet at least a dozen if not more of those CD duplicate repertory between record labels, or he re-recorded stuff he had recorded decades before. So, "Mrs. Nobody from Nowhere" (hat tip to "The Great Gatsby") puts out 100 CDs. Naah.
BTW, there was a tempest in a teapot some years back about an Eastern European violinist who advanced to the semi-finals of a newly-established violin competition (perhaps in South America?) on the basis of recordings and recommendations, who arrived on the scene, and let's say, according to reports, she played at the John Marks level. Just did not have anything. Conceivably, she just freaked out and had massive stage fright, but the judges and organizers certainly believed that a fraud had been perpetrated.
Strange world.
JM
I'm a lawyer too, so I have good reason to know what you say about con artists being too greedy or dumb to know when to stop is usually true. Not always -- I've heard of cons who knew enough to retire rich in an Arizona ranch rather than behind bars, but I'm sure those are exceptions rather than the rule.
I've researched the Hatto case pretty thoroughly, and I've come to suspect that they wanted to see just how far they could push it before they were found out (which might well have happened only after both of them were dead, of course). My theory is, rather than being greedy or dumb (which I admit is the usual case, as in your examples), they wanted maximum revenge on a musical establishment that had (in their view) rudely and arbitrarily pushed her aside. I suppose getting the full measure of revenge would require getting found out and becoming front-page news at some point, to embarrass all who had been had.
And you are absolutely right about the improbable size and scope of her discography, even when recorded over a long career, much less the 13 years in which the Hatto recordings were supposedly made.
For Moravec, counting very roughly, I count 40 "sessions" over 40 years of recording (1962-2002). But that 40 "sessions" includes several recorded live performances, the "Amadeus" soundtrack, and two DVDs.
For a serious artist, it's a lot to put out one recording a year with very serious repertory. Nathaniel Rosen's Bach solo cello Suites were recorded in two sessions that were six months apart. A serious artist like Moravec would clear the decks and work very hard for a major piece like the Schumann Concerto, knowing that his reputation depended upon being able to be mentioned in the same breath with--anyone. I can tell you that for the 90 days before recording his solo LP and CD of Ysa˙e, Kreisler, and Bach, Arturo Delmoni for all intents and purposes dropped everything and did nothing but practice and prepare for that session. You can't do that too many times a year.
So, yes, when all is said and done, the critics were too gullible. But perhaps they are just restaurant critics who have never spent 10 sweaty hours in a commercial kitchen. In other words, they think that the stork brings the recordings, and have little idea how much work great recordings are. E.g., most musicians I know don't want anyone else supervising the editing, and most want to attend the mastering too. OK, that's weeks and days not being able to do anything else.
The clues were all there, but people wanted to believe a good story.
JM
I have both of Moravec's recordings of the Schumann concerto--the studio recording with the Czech Phil and a live performance from Dallas conducted by Mata. Both are fine recordings, but he's especially good in the Czech recording.
-but not as bad as Bryce Morrison in the Gramophone, who (as I never tire of regurgitating) praised "Hatto's" recordings of the Mozart piano sonatas, finding them far preferable to Ingrid Haibler's set, when, in fact, they were THE SAME RECORDINGS! The fact that Morrison was not booted out on his behind speaks volumes about the ethics of certain publications.
I must say however, that I've bought a couple of issues of the Gramophone recently: sometimes they have the most up-to-date information on forthcoming babe musician releases! ;-)
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