Breaking Scandal

The British pianist Joyce Hatto, who died last year, has become something of a cult figure - I believe I first heard her name on a great pianists mailing list I am a member of. The eminent critic Richard Dyer called her the "greatest pianist no one's ever heard of."

Perhaps not. In a rather fascinating breaking scandal, it seems a number of the recordings issued by the Concert Artist/Fidelio label, which is owned by Hatto's husband, are by other pianists, including Yefim Bronfman and Laszlo Simon. Here are links to relevant articles:

• The story breaks at Gramophone


• A writeup of one analysis at the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music


• Pristine Classical's analysis of a bunch of purported Hatto recordings


• A long thread at Google Groups. The real fun here is watching the Hatto partisans trying to cope.


• Vivien Schweitzer picks up the story at Playbill Arts


• Jessica Duchen is following the story and has many links


• Joshua Kosman's blog tipped me off to this in the first place


• The NY Times picks up the story
  

The forger evidently didn't realize that digital recordings encode enough information to allow iTunes to identify the tracks. Ooops!