Joyce Hatto - Too Good to be True?

Classical music has its own bona fide scandal.

This one comes in the form of the late Joyce Hatto, a pianist hailed by The Guardian last summer (2006.7.10) as 'one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced.'

Now Hatto's recordings for the label Concert Artist are said to bear far too much resemblance to recordings made for other labels by other concert artists. Pristine Audio, the studio investigating the matter for Gramophone magazine, is not mincing words. It calls Rachmaninov, Lizst, Brahms, Chopin and Godowski recordings attributed to Hatto 'an audacious recording hoax' and summarizes its work to date:

We have yet to investigate a Hatto recording that has not proved to be a hoax.

Here are the allegations from Pristine Audio.

Here's the story as reported and updated by James Inverne in Gramophone.

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