Joyce Hatto .....All a sham?

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!