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The classical-music recording world has long had its own smoke and mirrors lurking behind its aura of integrity - ever since recording tape was snipped any number of ways to create great performances that never actually happened.
Rarely, though, have entire recordings been called into question, as are those of Joyce Hatto, a recently deceased British pianist who made more than 100 discs of solo and concerto repertoire that place her, in the minds of pianophiles, among the best of our time.
Late last week, seven discs published under her name by her own label, Concert Artist, were revealed to have been plagiarized. The most outrageous examples so far have Hatto’s name on long-available, major-label performances by Vladimir Ashkenazy (Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2) and Yefim Bronfman (Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 and 3). It’s such heady company that veteran pianist Gary Graffman, former Curtis Institute of Music president, said, “If none of these (plagiarized recordings) turn out to be something that I did, I’ll be deeply insulted!”
The majority of those plagiarized, though, are talented but lower-profile artists who have recorded for small, independent labels, often at their own considerable expense. For that reason, verifying Hatto’s entire discography - especially now with all of her recordings under question - could take years. Meanwhile, is it possible that her career, as it is now perceived, never existed at all?
Her biography is one of the few that could have justified the quality of her alleged recordings and staved off suspicion, at least for a while. Born in 1928, she seems to have been a Zelig-like creature, studying composition with Paul Hindemith, the Chopin etudes with Alfred Cortot, and performing with conductors such as Victor de Sabata. Cancer is said to have ended her concertizing in the mid-1970s. Her music-making until her death at 77 in 2006 (aside from some reported 1989 concerts) was confined to a Cambridge recording studio.
The discs have an air of legitimacy: Cover art is handsome and cases give specific recording dates and list engineers and producers. The concerto outings, though, are attributed to an organization vaguely named National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rene Kohler, though at least two of those recordings are, in fact, the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Bernard Haitink and Los Angeles Philharmonic with Esa-Pekka Salonen. The repertoire was vast, including all the Beethoven and Mozart sonatas. Few critics could get their arms around it enough to hear stylistic inconsistencies.
In one case, the plagiarists’ tracks weren’t fully covered: Critic Jed Distler put on a Hatto disc of Liszt pieces, but the digital reader attributed it to Laszlo Simon. The London-based Gramophone magazine reported last week that sound-wave tests revealed Hatto recordings as identical to published ones by Minoru Nojima, Simon and Bronfman. In one case, speeds of the performances had been altered electronically.
The evidence is available with A/B comparisons on the Web site www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax.html, which expands the list of those plagiarized to include Eugen Indjic and Ashkenazy. The informed ear can hear differences in the style of playing: Her Chopin etudes show a wholly different use of fingers and body weight than her Liszt etudes, which are among those plagiarized.
Ultimately, one asks not just how this happened, but why. There’s no mercantile motivation: Self-published and available mostly through British Web sites (such as www.concertartistrecordings.com), the recordings can’t have sold more than a thousand copies of each title. The amount of money involved is hardly worth a trip to small claims court.
The more likely motivation is the Mozart Requiem Syndrome: Just as Mozart’s last work was anonymously commissioned by a nobleman who wanted to claim it as his own as a monument to his deceased wife, Hatto’s husband, William Barrington-Coupe, at least aided in creating one of the world’s greatest classical piano discographies in memory of his long-ill, long-suffering spouse. But you also wonder if Hatto herself was in on it: She sometimes contributed her own program notes. Could she have not known what was going on?
Most plagiarism case histories have a pathetic undercurrent, but this one has more than usual. This is an artist who was ready to leave her mark on the world before cancer hit - if her biography is to be believed. All of the non-fictitious great conductors her biography claims that she worked with are conveniently silenced by death. Some, such as de Sabata, retired in the early 1950s (when Hatto was only 25 or so) and worked little in England.
Her concert years seem not to have left much impression. Graffman played extensively in London throughout the 1950s and `60s, but never heard of Hatto until last year. “She was said to be the first pianist to play all nine Beethoven symphonies transcribed by Liszt,” says Graffman. “If she did - assuming it was some place other than a small town in Wales - I would have at least known about it.”
Her shortcut to immortality - however temporary - was accomplished with surprising ease, even if you’re not referencing that great movie about a fabricated war, “Wag the Dog.” The Hatto story is exactly the inspirational sort that music lovers, including jaded critics, want to believe. The timeline of her late-in-life artistic evolution parallels that of the late Clara Haskil, whose star rose in the 1950s only after a near-fatal brain tumor. The classical world is one of arduous work but also miracles of artistry. Every year brings child prodigies wise beyond their years.
Meanwhile, the demise of major classical recording labels over the last decade has given rise to an uncountable number of independent labels. Among the many musicians turned out each year by the world’s conservatories, the unknown ones who record for such operations are often as talented and distinctive as those who fill seats at Carnegie Hall. With downloads, the classical world is becoming further decentralized. Who can keep track of shady activities? Who is to stop a little-known pianist in Los Angeles from claiming the recordings of a little-known artist in Avignon?
If nothing else, the Hatto scandal will prompt a level of skepticism in the music-consuming public that’s already present within the industry. Though the Curtis Institute insists on in-person auditions, the academic world is full of stories of jurors who hear an impressive audition tape and then realize, “Oh my God! That recording is me!”
