A Piano Virtuoso's Bizarre Revenge

Critics: as a performer you can't live with them, but you can't live without them. And what do they really know? If you can read between the lines of this story, not much. In fact it took a digital guru to get to the bottom of this. But don't take our word for it...read on.

形 不体面的! Joyce Hatto became a star when she released 104 brilliant recordings of classical works and then they were proven to be fakes. It was a remarkable story, one that instantly attracted the attention of Hollywood producers. How, virtually overnight, did a frail old lady become 'the greatest instrumentalist almost nobody had heard of?'

Nearly 30 years after she retired from the concert halls with ovarian cancer, classical pianist Joyce Hatto and her producer husband William Coupe released 104 of the world's most famous and challenging solo performances and piano concertos on their tiny record label Concert Artists.

While Joyce, until then barely known among the classical community, performed the music on her Steinway piano, her husband recorded the interpretations, producing an astonishing catalogue of work which he hoped would become her legacy. By the time she died last June, aged 77, at their home in Royston, Hertfordshire, the couple had created a cult phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic.

Joyce was described by critics as a 'national treasure', and 'one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced'.

However, last year, in an extraordinary twist, leading classical music magazine Gramophone said it could prove Hatto's purported works were fake. By electronically comparing the pitch, volume and tempo of the music with other artists, they found the soundwaves were identical - at least five of the records were performed by other artists and conductors. Many more fakes were uncovered.

Classical pianist David Owen Norris was informed that his 1988 rare solo piano recording of Elgar's Symphony No 1 in A flat major, opus 55, has been passed off as Hatto's work. 'I'm just very sad,' he said. 'I think it's pathetic really that somebody should be reduced to this.'

Suspicions grew that Hatto, who struggled throughout her career to earn real respect and acclaim, deliberately took part in a massive fraud to create a reputation she never deserved and to take revenge on the classical music industry.

According to Gramophone, Coupe not only lifted works of international pianists but also recordings made by orchestras and conductors. The sleeve-notes credit orchestras such as the National Philharmonic-Symphony and the Warsaw Philharmonia - neither of which exist - and the conductor Rene Kohler, whom Coupe said studied at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow. However, nobody has ever seen a photograph of Kohler and the university denied anyone of that name had studied there.

News of the apparent deception sent shockwaves through the classical music world and left many asking questions about Hatto and her husband. Little is known about them - Hatto gave only a handful of interviews before her death…...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-438296/Revenge-fraudster-pianist.html