Joyce Hatto .....All a sham?

I think this is mostly interesting to me because I assume serious classical listeners are hearing individual nuances in the ways musicians perform/interpret that are lost on me, and while that's obviously true, I think I overestimate just how great of an effect that sort of thing can have. I mean, people are playing pieces old enough that even their possible interpretations have been standardized, on an instrument that's comparatively low down the scale of different players having different sounds on it, in a field where there are plentiful recordings of any given piece -- I guess it's not that surprising that you could dig up a good performance and impress people with it as your own.

Been following this from another board since yesterday and yeah its amazing (or not) that just one person (Peter Lemken on that board) had his listening to that level of being able to spot stylistic inconsistencies to say that the same person couldn't play two composers such as Prokokiev and Mozart the way it apparently ws claimed. Plus some basic questioning of this back story.

something is kinda fishy here

That algorithm sounds kinda fishy!

How CDDB works

CDDB was designed around the task of identifying entire CDs, not merely single tracks. The identification process involves creating a "discid", a sort of "fingerprint" of a CD created by performing calculations on the track duration information stored in the table-of-contents of the CD. This discid is used with the internet database, typically either to download track names for the whole CD or to submit track names for a newly-identified CD.

Since identification of CDs is based on the length and order of the tracks, CDDB cannot identify playlists in which the order of tracks has been changed, or compilations of tracks from different CDs. CDDB also cannot distinguish between different CDs that have the same number of tracks and the same track lengths.

Critics charge that the field listings for CDDB are inadequate for the inclusion of proper identification of classical music recordings. So far, this issue has not been adequately nor uniformly addressed.

http://www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax.html

what a wierd story.

That would be awesome.

the main thing that is freaking weird about this is that it took THAT LONG for someone to stick this in itunes. I guess classical music fans aren't much for the ipods.

from reading that link, it looks like most of the Hatto editions were either subtly or not-so-subtly timestretched, resulting in slightly different track lengths, which is enough to fool cddb. no reason to do this other than to fool people, and I guess they just forgot to do that for this one Liszt CD.

Julio, if you can find a link to the other forums discussing the performances I'd love to look over those.

the original r3 thread
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F2620064?thread=3894039&show=181

one on the shitty nu boards
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F6643901?thread=3902529

http://r3ok.myforum365.com/index.php?topic=245.0

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2005/08/21/after_recording_119_cds_a_hidden_jewel_comes_to_light/?p1=MEWell_Pos2

times obit from last year

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article692622.ece

times coverage following up Gramophone's announcement

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

and one last point, I've already read a few posts in other places about how this proves how classical music fans aren't big on iPods if it all it took was someone sticking a disc into iTunes... since most of the 119 Hatto discs were timealtered, and it's only been about one and a half years since people started waking up to her mail-order-only catalog -- this seems like it was caught reasonably quickly.

online classical sales are way, way up over physical sales.

this is a pretty great story. it's a little nerve wracking to see how casual people are getting about attribution in the digital age, and it's telling to see how _shocked_ people are that something like this could have happened -- 'don't those experts know their stuff?' -- well yes they do, and they caught it reasonably quickly, considering. we're all living with this endemic fuzziness.

I remember a dinner party where someone was proudly playing a leak of the yet-to-be-released Boards of Canada album that were pretty clearly fake, and when I politely expressed doubt he brusquely got up from the table to bring the iPod over to show me the tags & prove that I was wrong... wow that's some confidence

linked via Rambler, one of the more ardent Hatto reviewers Christopher Howell writes about his correspondence with Hatto & husband, and touches on the role of the critic -- http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Feb07/Hatto_Howell.htm

that Howell correspondence with Barrington-Coupe over the details of the performances is unbelievable. it's hard not to admire a hoax taken to a level like this, beyond the financial resources needed to press 100+ physical CDs, this guy really knew how to talk shop. this is so great, I hope I can still order a few of these discs.

- Hatto's career begins in late 50's
- Records Bax's 'Symphonic Variations' for EMI at Abbey Road in early 70's, among other releases & concert appearences
- Retires in late 70's with onset of illness
- Husband begins releasing private pressings of CD's at an amazing rate in 2003 & sending out to reviewers. Liner notes indicate recording dates from late 80's to present day.
- First mainstream articles & coverage in late 2005 - early 2006
- First doubts posted to rec.music.classical.recordings in January 2006, shouted down by ardent fans
- March 2006 issue of Gramophone - Jeremy Nicholas' article 'Piano Dreams', followed by publication of several sceptical letters to the editor in following issues
- June 30, 2006 - Hatto dies, glowing obituaries in the Times, the Guardian, MusicWeb
- July 2006 issue of Gramophone -- Nicholas responds, challenging anyone to back up their accusations with solid legal evidence -- doubters go silent, reviews continue
- 15 February 2007 - www.gramophone.co.uk goes online with evidence of forgery

wikipedia's linked the main articles as well

Can anyone explain my question in the comments page - is cddb just not that good in the first place at id (so if 10/12 tracks are lifted instead of all 12) xp

Posted by tracerhand on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007. Share This

first -- yes, definitely. would love to see anyone try and tell 50 different recordings of Debussy etudes apart after 5-30 years of professional reviewing without the packaging. and nowhere is the background story of a performer more a part of listening than in classical.

second -- yeah, see this is exactly the kind of perception of this story that I'm trying to fight -- the headline looks bad, 'iTunes uncovers fraud that stuffy classical experts missed, they should just go listen to Radiohead' -- but anyone who looks into it can see why so many were unprepared for a con game taken to a level like this. not that it isn't fun to read a rec.music.classical.recordings thread that is basically identical to a ILM flamewar thread at a 'higher' level of discourse (gets really good around page four), but maybe think about this for more than 2 seconds before throwing garbage

julio -- there are aspects of cddb that are still a bit of a mystery to me. I've had it ID discs that were not redbook clones of the commercial disc. I've had a friend _swear_ that CDDB successfully ID'd a vinyl rip of an album he personally made as the released disc -- the times are _not_ identical overall, but somehow -- it was close enough? I didn't believe him, but... well... it may be trickier than I'd originally thought. perhaps 10/12 tracks is enough to have iTunes throw out a similar disc as a suggestion. I need to ask around about this.

& on a purely speculative note -- perhaps in late January, someone in the know personally uploaded cddb tags of the Hatto disc with tags pointing to the Simon? I'm just having fun now, but the internet's a big place

I ws thinking of saying something 'if you think ILM is bad then you oughta read this!' :-)

But actually the couple of classical boards I'm on (linked by Henry above) aren't so bad (r3ok. board ws only created last week). That board has only the odd - "OMG its all decadence post Schoenberg!!" - type poster.

I don't know if 'professionals' ever claim they can distinguish subtle nuances in that way. Some (and only some), like Max Harrison (who used to write for wire a few years ago) ws able to listen to a new recording of a work to tell if the performer is giving it a new 'view', then communicate as to whether they think that is something worth seeing, I suppose, while doing the whole compare/contrast with previous recordings from years ago. But yeah the market doesn't need to be so saturated with performances on CD so that you can read someone doing all this work in the first place.

But the classical recording industry can't face recording some of today's composers and ensembles - that gets a big fat NO!