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itunes finds a fake
Feb. 27th, 2007 08:06 amSo a man puts a classical piano CD into his computer, and the online itunes database registers it as being by a different pianist. Puzzled, he checks it out and it is.
And a teapost-tempest has ensued, for further investigation has suggested that most of the recorded legacy of Joyce Hatto, the pianist whose name was on the label, is similarly pirated. Some had apparently found it odd that a talented but not world-shaking pianist who'd retired from concertizing 35 years ago should suddenly, in her ill old age just before she died last year, become a master of an astonishing range of repertoire; but others had acclaimed her as a remarkable little-known find.
Hatto's husband, the producer who'd issued the recordings on his own label, at first stoutly maintained their authenticity without attempting to explain how other pianists' names got encoded in the tracks, but now he confesses a sad story of fakery that started small and just got out of hand.
And there's been lots of commentary on this, some less blithery than others.
I am not such a connoisseur of individual performers that I'd ever heard of Hatto before the scandal broke, so I'm in no position to say whether her astonishing apparent range of repertoire and style should have raised suspicions. But I can say that, in the absence of any reason to suspect fakery, it's not surprising or damning for critics not to be able to identify a specific performer in a recording they hadn't heard before. It's a little bit like reading an unsigned new story: there may be traits that can lead you to say "this is definitely in so-and-so's style," but whether it is that person or just someone similar or a good pastiche can't be established definitely without external knowledge.
While the scale of the Hatto case might be unparalleled, deliberately misattributed recordings in classical music are nothing new. Warning signs of this kind are all over most of the historical discographies of 1930s-1950s performers that I've seen. Identifying such mislabeled historical recordings may start by listening to them and saying, "That doesn't sound like Toscanini to me," but it continues with research in archives.
More transparently, there was once a whole label devoted to issuing pirated LPs in the US taken from shortwave radio tapes of BBC broadcasts of obscure modern music. They were issued as by imaginary performers with extremely bland names, but I doubt that anyone knowledgeable enough to want the music was fooled, as most of the works had only ever been performed once, on those BBC broadcasts. The only people who seem to know or care much about this business are discographers of some of the more frequently-heard composers.
And a teapost-tempest has ensued, for further investigation has suggested that most of the recorded legacy of Joyce Hatto, the pianist whose name was on the label, is similarly pirated. Some had apparently found it odd that a talented but not world-shaking pianist who'd retired from concertizing 35 years ago should suddenly, in her ill old age just before she died last year, become a master of an astonishing range of repertoire; but others had acclaimed her as a remarkable little-known find.
Hatto's husband, the producer who'd issued the recordings on his own label, at first stoutly maintained their authenticity without attempting to explain how other pianists' names got encoded in the tracks, but now he confesses a sad story of fakery that started small and just got out of hand.
And there's been lots of commentary on this, some less blithery than others.
I am not such a connoisseur of individual performers that I'd ever heard of Hatto before the scandal broke, so I'm in no position to say whether her astonishing apparent range of repertoire and style should have raised suspicions. But I can say that, in the absence of any reason to suspect fakery, it's not surprising or damning for critics not to be able to identify a specific performer in a recording they hadn't heard before. It's a little bit like reading an unsigned new story: there may be traits that can lead you to say "this is definitely in so-and-so's style," but whether it is that person or just someone similar or a good pastiche can't be established definitely without external knowledge.
While the scale of the Hatto case might be unparalleled, deliberately misattributed recordings in classical music are nothing new. Warning signs of this kind are all over most of the historical discographies of 1930s-1950s performers that I've seen. Identifying such mislabeled historical recordings may start by listening to them and saying, "That doesn't sound like Toscanini to me," but it continues with research in archives.
More transparently, there was once a whole label devoted to issuing pirated LPs in the US taken from shortwave radio tapes of BBC broadcasts of obscure modern music. They were issued as by imaginary performers with extremely bland names, but I doubt that anyone knowledgeable enough to want the music was fooled, as most of the works had only ever been performed once, on those BBC broadcasts. The only people who seem to know or care much about this business are discographers of some of the more frequently-heard composers.
