Pianist's spouse admits to hoax

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Mar 4, 2007 | by Robert Barr Associated Press

LONDON -- The husband of the late British pianist Joyce Hatto has admitted passing off recordings by other artists as those of his wife, who had been hailed as a neglected keyboard genius, a Swedish record producer said Tuesday.

In a letter to the Stockholm-based BIS label, William Barrington- Coupe has acknowledged the deception, said Robert von Bahr, head of BIS Records.

Barrington-Coupe produced more than 100 CDs attributed to his wife, who stopped performing in public in 1976. Allegations that he had stolen the work of other artists were reported earlier this month by Gramophone, the British classical music magazine.

Laszlo Simon's recording of Liszt's "Transcendental Etudes" was among the first to be identified as a fraudulent Hatto recording, Gramophone said.

"Yes he did (acknowledge it), because I was the only one that confronted him in a respectful way," Bahr told The Associated Press in Stockholm. "We've had a letter correspondence because he has also stolen music from me."

The Associated Press could not immediately reach Barrington- Coupe, whose telephone number is unlisted.

Gramophone reported Barrington-Coupe's letter to BIS on Monday and said on its Web site that it had confirmed the contents with him.

Hatto, who died last year at age 77, was praised in British obituaries.

"Her legacy is a discography that in quantity, musical range and consistent quality has been equaled by few pianists in history," The Guardian newspaper said in its obituary.

Gramophone appealed for Barrington-Coupe to provide a full accounting of the recordings to list those that were actually by his wife and those that had been plagiarized.

"Only then will we know how good she actually was, and only then can at least some of her reputation be salvaged," the magazine said.

However, it quoted Barrington-Coupe as saying: "I'm tired, I'm not very well. I've closed the operation down, I've had the stock completely destroyed, and I'm not producing any more. Now I just want a little bit of peace."

In the letter, Barrington-Coupe said his wife was suffering from advanced ovarian cancer by the time he had the capacity to produce CDs, and her grunts of pain had marred recording sessions. Barrington-Coupe said he searched for pianists of a similar sound and style to patch over his wife's recordings.

Over time, the letter said, he took bigger and bigger pieces of other recordings and learned how to manipulate speed to disguise the source.

The deception unraveled when a Gramophone reader reported that he had put the "Hatto" recording of "Transcendental Etudes" on his computer, and the player software identified the recording as Simon's version on BIS. A Gramophone critic then listened to the two recordings and discovered they sounded the same, the magazine said.

Then a "Hatto" recording of Rachmaninoff piano concertos was subsequently identified as one by Yefim Bronfman on Sony, Gramophone said.

After that, Andrew Rose of Pristine Audio found that a recording of music by Leopold Godowsky was found to actually be one of Carlo Grante on Altarus, but slowed down by 15 percent.

Barrington-Coupe had denied the deception only last week, insisting that his wife's version of the Rachmaninoff was far superior to Bronfman's, Gramophone said.

John O'Conor, the Irish pianist whose 1990 recording of Beethoven's Sonata in E reappeared with Hatto's name in 1999, said Barrington-Coupe apparently mined for material in forgotten recordings.

"I'm really impressed and flattered that anybody even thought to look back to one of my performances from so long ago and found the link," O'Conor told the AP.

He said he was mystified by the praise heaped on Hatto.

"You had the media calling her the 'greatest' this and 'most prolific' that -- and people in the industry kept on saying: 'Who?' She hadn't been heard of for 30 years," O'Conor said.

On the Net: www.gramophone.co.uk or www.pristineclassical.com/ HattoHoax.html