Joyce Hatto: Identifications & Scandal
On February 15, 2007, the news broke that the widely praised recording on the Concert Artist label of Liszt’s Transcendental Études by the late British pianist Joyce Hatto (1928-2006) was in fact an illegal copy of László Simon’s BIS recording. Within a week several other “Hatto” Concert Artist releases were also found to be forgeries. In some cases the Hatto versions had sped up or slowed down the source recording by as much as 20% in order to disguise their true origins. It is now believed that all of the Joyce Hatto CDs on the Concert Artist label are fakes, with the exception of the Arnold Bax Symphonic Variations, which she genuinely recorded with conductor Vernon Handley in 1970.
The Hatto discs received rave reviews from Gramophone, Musicweb-International, ClassicsToday, the Boston Globe, and other publications and websites. William Barrington-Coupe, the owner of Concert Artist and husband of Joyce Hatto, never divulged the source recordings he used to create the Hatto catalogue – a disclosure that would have allowed the actual performers to receive the acknowledgement and credit they deserve. The task of discovering and crediting the proper performers has instead been left to piano enthusiasts. Thanks to detective work by a number of people throughout the world, many of the Joyce Hatto CDs have been properly identified, but several remain unresolved.
Barrington-Coupe’s claim that the Hatto forgeries were an act of love for his dying wife rings hollow in light of the fact that he soon started a “Sergio Fiorentino” series, also fabricated from other pianists’ recordings, and marketed alongside the Hatto discs. This was a particularly disgraceful act, as Fiorentino, already deceased, was posthumously drawn into this sordid affair through no fault of his own.
What you’ll find here
On these pages you will find the current identification status of all published Concert Artist Joyce Hatto CDs. In some cases more than one version of the same CD was issued. These variants have been accounted for when known. Each identification has first been confirmed by ear and then verified visually using wav-image comparisons. Any tempo manipulation that took place is noted.
Because Barrington-Coupe often altered the EQ and volume level when creating his forgeries, the Hatto and source wav files may not look exactly alike. However, the matching of the wav file patterns is still clear.
Track durations are rounded to the nearest second after trimming leading and trailing silence. For tracks where the exact endpoint cannot be determined, such as those with long fade-outs, the striking of the final note or chord is used as the endpoint.
Format of the identification pages
Each identification page follows a consistent structure:
- Cover scans of the Hatto release and each identified source.
- A capsule summary explaining how the disc was compiled.
- A sources list (performer • label/catalog) for the identified tracks.
- Wav file comparisons for the identified tracks: the source recording and the Hatto track are juxtaposed, with timings rounded to the nearest second (after trimming silence).
Contribute
This is an ongoing effort that benefits from community input. If you believe you have identified one of the remaining tracks, please use the Contact page to send me an email. I will be glad to follow up and post waveform verifications here.