Joyce Hatto Piano Fraud, Wrapped Up Nicely by The New Yorker

It’s been out for the better part of the month, so this post is hardly news. But only yesterday did I get around to reading and hearing Mark Singer’s excellent article and podcast on the Joyce Hatto piano fraud.

This coverage is one-stop shopping on one of the summer’s best stories. Let’s sum it up:

1. Joyce Hatto enjoys minor piano career but stops performing in the 70s.
2. Her husband, a record producer, begins releasing “her” catalog of recordings, representing an astounding breadth of repertoire and a fevered pace of productivity despite Hatto being unable to perform in public due to cancer.
3. Classical internet community falls in love with recordings and spunky narrative. Joyce Hatto is the best pianist you’ve never heard of! Why, it almost sounds as if she becomes a different pianist when she plays different pieces!
4. Not too many people inquire too deeply into the recordings, or the names of the gifted-but-unknown conductors, or the impressive orchestras they lead in the Hatto piano concerto recordings. Mainstream music critics write gushing reviews.
5. One day a listener slides a “Hatto” CD into iTunes and is puzzled when another musician’s name appears. A reluctant analysis ensues on sites like Musicweb.
6. Music theorist Nicholas Cook and colleagues prove, through data visualization techniques, that Hatto’s recordings are technically identical other performers’ releases.
7. Collectors, working collaboratively across the internet, begin to identify true performers.

The discovery of the fraud has, in turn, led to an even more lively discussion on technical and artistic points:

• Why did the discovery have to be made through technical serendipity? Why hadn’t more people recognized the original recordings?
• How much do context and backstory add to the enjoyment of art? Singer indirectly alludes to the idea of “Joyce Hatto’s Career” as a work of art in itself when he asks “did it make her happy?” Ms. Hatto died over a year ago, before the truth came out, and her health status prior to her death is not public information. We are left to speculate on just what she knew or condoned.
• Can this be considered performance art, as has been suggested in the case of J.T. Leroy, the hot novelist with the courageous backstory. Though there’s a compelling difference between the Hatto fraud and the Leroy fraud. Laura Albert wrote her own stuff — she just lied about who “she” was.

Update on Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 03:04 by John Gibbons

Originally posted  Oct 5, 2007. Republished for the entertainment of “The Great Pianists” class.

Comments

[Richard Shubart]

If there was any (and I mean ANY) attempt to deceive, then it is fraud, totally unacceptable and I have absolutely no symphathy for the perpetrator(s).

[Bonnie Gibbons]

I would say there was a spectacularly successful attempt at deception. The guy took recordings by other artists and published them with Joyce Hatto's name on them. The wiki lists several names, which included not only unknowns but Yefim Bronfman and Vladimir Ashkenazy. At one point they fabricated a bio of the conductor of the orchestra purportedly accompanying "her" concertos (in reality, probably Salonen or Haitink)... also a wonderful story. Holocaust survivor, you know.

[Wolfman]

A broader question lurking in this is just how much of a performers greatness is playing versus personality.

While not the studied ear (as many of you are), I can rarely distinguish one performer from the other, or for that matter one perfromance from the other with exceptions of course. With the cognisenti of wine, it has been shown time and again that they are not as accurate in identifying wines. I suspect the same is true in music.

Not that this should detract from the enjoyment of a great PERFORMANCE, or GREAT MUSIC. Just that I think one should be careful not to confuse the two.

Nigel Kennedy is sometimes crticized for his famboyant perfromance and medicore viloin - but it is a heck of a performance, and I did not really notice the cadenzas were a little 'weak and lame'.

This affair, is saddly a vainglorious episode, and almost a canary for our cultures desire for celebrity over content.

[Bonnie Gibbons]

Wolfman, this is interesting to me: how much the backstory and personality add to the experience.

1. The Hatto story hit (if memory serves - at least I think I noticed them together) around the same time that a Washington Post reporter had Joshua Bell play in a DC subway station. I think that article was a little confused as to the success criteria of the stunt -- to see if Joshua Bell were recognized out of context? To see if his ability was recognized as superior to the average busker, and to see if he got more money? To get people to notice music in a place it isn't usually available? As I recall they didn't count the $20 thrown by a person who recognized him. He raked in about $40 an hour.

I wouldn't recognize Bell dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.

You ask if people really do recognize performers. I'm now a voice student so I certainly recognize certain voices. And as a longtime cello student I don't recognize "the Rostropovich sound" and whatnot but you DO recognize certain performances you hear over and over. I believe this did happen - a few collectors got deja-vu but were not taken seriously. It helped that MOST of the stolen recordings were of relative unknowns. But I am shocked that the famous concerto performances were not recognized.

I once recognized a particular performer AND conductor on the car radio doing the Immolation Scene from Gotterdammerung, but I had just heard the combo on a DVD quite recently. On the other hand, John and I both noticed on a radio performance that a cadence in Schubert's 9th was phrased in the exact same (atypical) way we had heard Barenboim do it live. Turned out it was Colin Davis.

I believe personality certainly influences at least one Chicago music critic. Several times I've been to a performance, and found the review to be unrecognizable to what I've heard. It's either him or me, but when you 're sort of straining to hear a singer and the reviewer praises their power something is wrong with somebody -- or with the acoustics.