letter from england fantasia for piano

Joyce Hatto’s incredible career. by Mark Singer

n the summer of 1989, in Royston, music labels that helped establish the England, a man named William Bar- form—known as the “super-bargain” rington-CoupeI cheerfully received a classical LP. Such recordings, which visitor from Germany: Ernst Lumpe, a retailed for roughly a dollar apiece, were high-school teacher, fervent music a wellspring of artful pseudonyms— lover, and record collector. For a couple Paul Procopolis, Giuseppe Parolini, the of years, the two men had sustained a Cincinnati Pro Arte Philharmonic, the correspondence that consisted mainly of Munich Greater State Symphony— Barrington-Coupe, a former classical- and Barry is credited with coining the music agent and a peripatetic record wittiest of all: Wilhelm Havagesse (con- producer, responding to Lumpe’s ques- ducting Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Schehe- tions about the authenticity of various razade,” as rendered by the spurious arcane LPs. Zurich Municipal Orchestra). The During the nineteen-fifties and six- small labels that Barry worked at had a ties, a number of record companies in tendency to run aground financially, England and America had a practice— but perhaps his most dependable asset questionable but nodded and winked was his resilience—a facility for dusting at—of repackaging LPs by established himself off and moving on to the next artists as the work of fictitious perform- venture. ers and selling the recordings at a deep Among Lumpe’s fifteen thousand discount. Barrington-Coupe, known LPs, many of which he bought second- to familiars as Barry, worked at several hand, were about five hundred of murky Above left: an undated photograph of Joyce Hatto.

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 66—133SC.—live art r16453RD at left, critical cut to be watched throughout entire press run! pls use non rd image for color.—live art r16572_RD at right. critical cut to be watched throughout entire press run! pls use non rd image for color—#2 page Above: Her husband and producer, William Barrington-Coupe, at home in Royston, Hertfordshire. Photograph by Steve Pyke.

TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 67—133SC.—live art r16572_RD at right. critical cut to be watched throughout entire press run! pls use non rd image for color provenance. A punctilious collector, he compact disks derived from old re- (the longer of two versions that Rach- wanted to know the true identities be- cordings, including many from its back maninoff wrote). Lumpe expressed ad- hind the masquerades. He had a partic- catalogue of LPs. Whatever commerce miration, only to be told, “Well, I’ve ular interest in an Italian , Sergio Barry conducted was a cottage indus- fooled you a little. I made a little joke. Fiorentino, and was compiling a dis- try, the cottage in question being a red That’s not actually Joyce, it’s Andrei cography. Many Fiorentino recordings brick house on a quiet street in an ex- Gavrilov”—a former winner of the In- had been released on Barry’s principal urban village an hour north of . ternational Tchaikovsky Competition. label, Concert Artist, and his work had He kept audio-editing equipment in Barry smiled. “But now here’s Joyce,” he often been appropriated and reissued an upstairs room. Downstairs, in the said, and he put in another cassette, a pseudonymously. Lumpe had turned to music room, which was furnished with different performance of the same ca- Barry for help in separating fact from a pair of grand pianos, Hatto gave pri- denza. It was a lighthearted, insignificant fiction. vate lessons; she had also taught at a jest, Lumpe thought, hardly a test or By the time the two men met, Barry nearby girls’ school. a ruse. was no longer a visible presence on the Barry still possessed a discerning classical-music scene, nor was his wife, ear and a comprehensive knowledge of fter their meeting, Lumpe re- Joyce Hatto, a talented pianist who classical music, and he responded with mained in touch with Barry, whose had achieved modest recognition as a gratifying specificity (and candor) to lettersA often included music-world gos- concert performer but hadn’t played in Lumpe’s queries. Though recovering sip or bulletins about his or Hatto’s public in more than a decade. The only from recent heart surgery, Barry was a health. Barry found rare 78s and LPs for Hatto recording Lumpe owned was a prodigious talker. Their conversation Lumpe’s collection, inquired about 1970 release of the “Symphonic Varia- lasted most of a day. Toward the end, Lumpe’s children, furnished seeds from tions,” by , a lesser-known Hatto joined the discussion. A slender, his flower garden. Among the record- twentieth-century British composer unassuming woman in her early sixties, ings he sent were works by Liszt and whose neo-Romantic works are unusu- with dark eyes and dense eyebrows, a Chopin that Hatto had played many ally ornate. fine jawline, and a dimpled smile, she years earlier, in concert. Several weeks According to Concert Artist’s cata- volunteered a few observations about after his trip to Royston, Lumpe also logue, the company’s founding ob- Fiorentino, but she spoke so quickly received in the mail a tape of a piano jective was to provide “a sounding that Lumpe had trouble understand- arrangement of Edward Elgar’s First board for young British talent sadly ne- ing her. Symphony—from a Hatto recital, Barry glected” by the major record compa- At a moment when she wasn’t in the said, that had taken place recently in nies. But Barry had produced few new room, Barry offered to play an excerpt . recordings since the early seventies. of a more recent recording of Hatto’s: This was unexpected: hadn’t Joyce To the extent that Concert Artist re- Rachmaninoff’s Third . Hatto retired from concertizing years mained active, it was mainly as a recy- He placed a cassette in a tape deck and earlier? A thank-you note to Barry elic- cling operation, issuing cassettes and they listened to its dizzying cadenza ited more details: The second half of the concert was the Liszt piano transcrip- tion of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which, unfortunately, “was not recorded due to some stupidity of the University Recording engineer.” But Barry had pressed the buttons himself in time to capture her encore, Liszt’s transcription of the “William Tell Overture.” For some reason, he hadn’t included a copy of this recording. Lumpe filed Hatto’s Elgar First Symphony among his sev- eral hundred cassette and reel-to-reel tapes. As a piano omnivore, Lumpe wel- comed the advent of online group dis- cussions and became a frequent con- tributor to Yahoo groups and a Usenet/ Google newsgroup, rec.music.classi- cal.recordings, where participants em- braced a hodgepodge of musical topics and the tenor of conversations ranged from meticulously informative to flam­ ingly combative. In the comparatively “Did he have any known enemies?” genteel Yahoo group ThePiano, one

TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 68—133SC.—live art A12354—#3 page—cartoon change and caption added popular amusement was the blind lis- tening quiz, in which an unidentified musical selection was uploaded and members critiqued the performance. In November, 2002, Lumpe posed a different type of quiz: “Look at the quite impressive list below and guess which pianist has recorded all these works over roughly the last fifteen years.” The list implied an artist with exceptional breadth, depth, and stam- ina: Bach (), Bee­ thoven (complete piano concertos, complete piano , complete bag- atelles), Brahms (piano concertos), Chopin (complete works for solo piano and for piano and orchestra, complete mazurkas, nocturnes, and polonaises), Schubert (complete piano sonatas), Liszt (complete etc.), a lot of Rachmaninoff and Scarlatti, Mendelssohn, Mozart, “Oh, I meant when are we going to get off this Mussorgsky, Saint-Saëns, Schumann, merry-go-round in a larger sense.” Tchaikovsky. No one guessed correctly, so Lumpe volunteered the answer: Joyce Hatto. It •• had been a trick question. These works had been recorded, he explained, but Next, Lumpe uploaded an excerpt preëminent interpreter of Rachmani- few were commercially available. In re- from a Hatto recording that Concert noff—as she “knew him well.” Deacon cent years, it seemed, Concert Artist Artist had released in 2002: Rach- continued, “His influence shows. Also, and Hatto had quietly embarked upon maninoff ’s transcription of the Scherzo the piano she uses for the recording is a major endeavor. With Barry acting as from Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer the piano which Rachmaninoff used in producer, Hatto had tackled a prodi- Night’s Dream.” At least one group the U.K. when he was on tour there.” As gious repertoire in the studio. It was an member, Tom Deacon, was prompted 2002 ended, Deacon volunteered a sum- unlikely undertaking for a woman now to buy a copy of the CD. In a subsequent mary of ThePiano’s accomplishments in her early seventies, made odder by the posting, Deacon asserted his familiarity for the year and crowed, “We ‘discov- fact that Barry had expended little effort with nearly every celebrated perfor- ered’ a seventy-four-year-old pianist to market the records. mance of this piece—he’d been the pro- by the name of Joyce Hatto who plays ducer of a two-hundred-CD set called everything!” articipants in the Yahoo group “Great of the 20th Century”— Lumpe’s next Hatto upload, an ex- demanded to know more about and declared Hatto’s version superior: “It cerpt from Liszt’s “Mephisto Waltz Hatto,P who wasn’t even mentioned in is just magical: light as a feather, fluent, No. 1,” so captivated listeners that one, the standard music reference books. colourful, textures limpid as a mountain Andrys Basten, posted it on her Web Such texts can be arbitrary, Lumpe re- spring, tonally luscious, rhythmically page. Another participant, a former plied online, and Hatto was an artist alive and bright. A dream.” Other forum professor of music, wrote that the Rach- “who worked just quietly and who ac- members concurred, including one who maninoff-Mendelssohn and Scarlatti quired more fame outside her country.” stated (“This may sound a bit blasphe- selections “proved that she is a formida- Quoting from Concert Artist promo- mous”) that he preferred Hatto’s playing ble pianist in the miniature arena” and tional material, he cited a roster of con- to Rachmaninoff ’s. that the Liszt “proclaims that she can do ductors and composers with whom On Christmas Eve, Lumpe shared a battle with the mastodons of the musi- she’d played (among them Benjamin Hatto recording of a Scarlatti , cal coliseum!” Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams). and it, too, elicited unqualified praise. A In the months that followed, Hatto After a series of recitals in London, few days later, Deacon announced that, discussions percolated in other Yahoo Lumpe reported, she had been “de- after his “Midsummer” posting, he had forums. Lumpe supplied bits of bio- scribed by the London Daily Telegraph received “a very nice note from the pia- graphical information culled from the as ‘The Indomitable Champion of nist.” (So: Hatto or Barry, or both, were Concert Artist Web site and added his Liszt.’ ” Another critic had observed keeping track of the online chatter.) own observations. As it happened, a that “probably not since Busoni has a Hatto told Deacon that she “studied stream of new Hatto CDs was finally pianist presented such a wide and rich this piece with Moiseiwitsch himself ”— becoming available. In February, 2003, in-depth repertoire.” Benno Moiseiwitsch, in his day the MusicWeb International, an online pub-

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 69—133SC.—live art A12558—#2 page—text reflow “Now what?” •• lication, featured a positive review of a three years I had worn the ivories down the Joyce Hatto boomlet was a viral Brahms compilation disk (Piano Con- and I was only ten”—but they “didn’t phenomenon, one that they had the certo No. 1: “a convincing performance really think that life as a musician was ability to influence. In a note to Lumpe of a frequently misread work”), among terribly secure.” Bach was integral to her enclosed with one of her CDs, Hatto the first of some seventy Hatto releases daily regimen, and she had a particular wrote, “To Ernst—my personal Inter- that it critiqued in the next four years. affinity for Chopin and Liszt, and had net publicist.” By following threads in The reviewer provided some rudimen- performed their works in Poland, at the online discussion groups, they could po- tary Hatto biography, and a month later peak of the Cold War, when she was tentially neutralize unflattering apprais- MusicWeb posted the transcript of a invited to join an official delegation of als (should any arise) or cultivate inti- lengthy 1973 interview that Hatto had Englishwomen. There were return trips macy in a virtual universe that teemed apparently given to Burnett James, a to Poland, as well as to Russia, on con- with piano lovers, each a self-anointed British music writer, who died in 1987. cert tours. critic but also, if properly massaged, a There was no indication of where the That same month, in MusicWeb, potential ally. Christopher Howell later interview had been published origi- Christopher Howell, reviewing favor- wrote, “Hatto’s tone of kind sincerity, nally—but, no matter, it helped to flesh ably Hatto’s Brahms Piano Concerto combined with WB-C’s avuncularity, out the portrait. No. 2, asked, “If she has been playing combine to give the recipient of their An “industrious child” (her phrase) around the world all these years . . . why efforts a sense of security, that he is and a “born performer” (Hatto quoting is the world so little aware of her?” doing the right thing in drawing atten- the British composer Sir Granville Ban- Speaking of the moribund Concert Art- tion to these recordings, that the couple tock, who, she said, had heard her play ist label, he said, “Where has it been all are not only grateful to him but actually at the age of seven), she was an only these years? How is it possible for a interested in him in a very human sort child whose father had been her first company to issue all this repertoire with of way.” teacher; he was an able pianist so en- practically nobody being aware of it? Barry and Hatto had similar episto- thralled by Rachmaninoff, she said, that How many records do they actually lary styles. The e-mails and letters that the only time she ever saw him in tears sell ?” emanated from Royston blended for- was when the great man died. Her par- MusicWeb’s critics soon found, as did mality with faux diffidence. (“Dear Mr. ents had encouraged her, installing a Deacon and other online scribes, that Howell, I do not usually write to critics Blüthner grand piano in their house in Barry and Hatto enjoyed having pen as this, I feel, is a barrier that should North London—“I spent every avail- pals. Only it wasn’t quite that simple. not be crossed too often. However, able hour and minute practicing. Within The couple intuitively recognized that your review of my Concert Artist set of

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 70—133SC.70—133SC.—live art A12578—#2 Page Cartoon retouched Mazurkas . . .”) Hatto thanked review- wrote. “The records are well engi- Hatto concertos (Brahms, Rachmanin- ers for their insights, volunteered nug- neered, and she uses wonderful instru- off, Prokofiev)? gets of philosophy (“So many pianists ments; still, her beautiful sound is her A colorful capsule biography of ruin a perfectly singable and beautiful own.” Köhler (source: Barry) eventually ap- melodic line by simply sticking on or- Boston was far enough from Royston peared online—a Polish-French-Ger- naments as if with elastoplast”), and that Dyer settled for a telephone inter- man Jew, a survivor of Treblinka with reminisced about decades-old recitals. view. “The pianist has a high-pitched, the bad luck to wind up for twenty-five Her digressions had a music of their girlish voice, and she speaks with the ve- years in the Soviet Gulag—but there own, punctuated by the tintinnabula- locity of one of her Liszt etudes,” he said was no mention of him or the orchestra tion of carefully dropped names (“I also of Hatto. “She will quote a Shakespeare in any reference book. If Köhler and the became friendly with Annie Fischer”; sonnet and a remark of Muhammad National Philharmonic-Symphony Or- “I did have the opportunity of playing Ali’s (‘Knock me down, and I will get up chestra were phantoms, then what about many of these sonatas to Clara Haskil”; immediately’) in the same spoken para- Hatto? That nebulous query became the “Rachmaninov did pass on some of his graph.” Barry told Dyer, “She doesn’t topic of more than one online discus- ideas to Nicholas Medtner who al- want to play in public because she never sion. It wasn’t so much an expression of lowed me to copy them into my own knows when the pain will start, or when disbelief in Hatto’s existence as it was edition”). One of Hatto’s preoccupa- it will stop, and she refuses to take obstinacy from live-performance pur- tions, shared by Barry, was the tyranny drugs. . . . I believe the illness has added ists, who argue that recordings are an of the classical-music critical establish- a third dimension to her playing; she unreliable measure of any musician’s ment: “I have always played what I gets at what is inside the music, what true qualities, given the manipulations thought was right (for me?) and have lies behind it.” permitted by studio technology. Still, taken some censure in my life for so So Hatto’s illness, ovarian cancer, pro- the over-all discourse remained reso- doing. Mostly, I must say, from En- vided an explanation of sorts for where lutely pro-Hatto. In light of her health glish critics”; “Thank you for the kind she had been all those years and bur- crisis, her adherents found Lemken’s things that you have said about my own nished the myth of her remarkable re- contrariness offensively callous. playing and for defending me against naissance. On the other hand, its senti- some quite unwarranted criticism.” mental gloss encouraged a mild backlash, uch skepticism seemed even more in Yahoo and Usenet postings, from pi- impertinent after a pair of reputable undamental to the burgeoning in- anophiles who were vaguely suspicious witnessesS vouched for the fact that, lit- terest in Hatto was awe that she because no major critics had written erally and figuratively, Joyce Hatto was couldF be so tirelessly productive during about her. In an online review of her re- the real thing. Ates Orga, a music critic what should have been her retirement. cording of Debussy’s Preludes, Christo- and historian, had written program Her exploits seemed even more remark- pher Howell acknowledged this prob- notes for some of her London recitals able after Richard Dyer, then the chief lem: “I realize that it’s getting a little during the seventies. “Her playing struck music critic of the Boston Globe, inter- embarrassing that this site continues to me as big-hearted and truthful, adven- viewed her in the summer of 2005 and churn out glowing review after glowing turous yet with time for finesse,” he later wrote an article that began, “Joyce Hatto review (not only from me) of Joyce Hat- recalled. He interviewed her at a hotel must be the greatest living pianist that al- to’s records. . . . I almost wish she would in Cambridge in February, 2005, and in most no one has ever heard of.” The next make a really bad disk just so I can show early 2006 MusicWeb published his paragraph contained a surprising revela- I know how to listen. But so far she seven-thousand-word profile, along tion: “Hatto, now 76, has not played in hasn’t. . . . If any reader who buys this or with an even lengthier account of her public in more than 25 years because of other Hatto disks on the strength of our recording career, including critiques of an ongoing battle with cancer. She was reviews feels he has been duped, remem- selected works. Orga depicted, as had once told that it is ‘impolite to look ill,’ ber we have a bulletin board. I should Burnett James and Richard Dyer, a and after a critic commented adversely very much like to know why only we are charismatic woman with vivid memo- on her appearance, she resolved to stop pushing these recordings.” ries of her experiences among music- playing concerts.” The first insistent questions about world luminaries and a keen atten- Dyer described having come upon Hatto came in the summer and fall of tiveness to the stylistic distinctions of the Concert Artist Web site more or 2005, in Internet postings by Peter various pianists. Orga essentially side- less inadvertently and finding the Hatto Lemken, a German conservatory grad- stepped the René Köhler enigma, im- listings (which had grown to more uate turned artist-manager turned busi- plying that he wasn’t sure what to be- than a hundred CDs). He contacted ness consultant. How was it that any- lieve. (“A survivor of the Holocaust gone Barrington-Coupe and asked, “Who is one, much less an infirm septuagenarian, missing in the murky wastelands and un- she?” Barry sent him a sample Hatto could record such a splendid and volu- spoken history of Cold War Europe, CD, “and I was hooked.” By the time minous body of work? Also, Lemken René Köhler . . .”) About Hatto’s musi- Dyer wrote his article, he’d listened to asked pointedly, who was René Köhler cianship Orga expressed no equivocation: about a third of her CDs. “All of them and what was the National Philhar- “Even when some of her decisions, her are excellent, and the best of them doc- monic-Symphony Orchestra—the con- occasional urgencies, are not to my taste, ument the art of a major musician,” he ductor and ensemble featured on several there’s a rightness, an honesty, to her re-

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 71—133SC. corded playing. . . . I feel in safe hands. . . . Tone, phrasing, projection. Articulation, pedalling, dynamics. Style, short-term Bad Dreams Are Good shaping, long-term architecture. The ability to speak in music—eloquently, The cats are in the fower beds rhetorically, passionately, murmuringly.” A red hawk rides the sky In the summer of 2005, Jeremy Nich- I guess I should be happy olas, an actor and critic, had interviewed Just to be alive Hatto and Barry in the same Cambridge But hotel and come away with impressions We have poisoned everything almost identical to Orga’s. He felt “an And oblivious to it all instant rapport” with the couple; Barry, The cell-phone zombies babble he thought, had a “fantastic knowledge Through the shopping malls of pianists, fantastic taste.” As they While condors fall from Indian skies spoke, however, with a tape recorder Whales beach and die in sand running, Nicholas knew that writing Bad Dreams are good about Hatto would be problematic, be- In the Great Plan cause she had no aptitude for linear conversation. “She was kind of daffy, And you cannot be trusted endearingly scatterbrained, with this Do you even know you are lying? butterfly mind,” he told me. “I had a list It’s dangerous to kid yourself of prepared questions. Like ‘What did You go deaf, dumb, and blind your father do? Were your parents mu- You take with such entitlement sical, did they have money? When did You give bad attitude you actually make your début?’ Pretty You have No grace simple, direct questions, but after a cou- No empathy ple of sentences she’d go off reminiscing. No gratitude Very hard to pin down. Very good on You have no sense of consequence her playing in the nineteen-fifties but Oh, my head is in my hands not very good on the later part of her life. Bad Dreams are good Talked very fast. Tremendous energy in In the Great Plan her voice. Terribly enthusiastic.” Nicholas, a biographer of the pianist and composer a wider audience; he effectively put on ry’s prepared remarks, beginning with a (1870-1938)—whose Studies on Cho- notice the editors of Gramophone, who in rhetorical apology to his wife that a ser- pin’s Études are among the most diffi- subsequent issues published consistently vice was being held in the first place, cult piano music ever written—had favorable, at times elated, reviews of her contrary to her wish to avoid showy been astonished to learn that Joyce CDs. Because, as Nicholas noted, she valedictory gestures at “your final pub- Hatto had recorded all fifty-three of the had “another 20 (!) in preparation,” fas- lic appearance.” To those who had sent Studies. Only three other artists, all cination with Hatto seemed destined condolences, whether they had met her men, had done the same. Before meet- to increase, and endure, well into the or not, she was “simply ‘Joyce.’ ” As an ing Hatto, Nicholas listened to her re- future. artist and a teacher, he said, “she would cordings of Chopin’s Études, the foun- say . . . there is God, the composer, and dation of the Godowsky variations, and atto died, of cancer, on June 29, then you. Nothing comes between com- thought that they were “just about the 2006, at the age of seventy-seven. poser and the listener. With Joyce you best I’ve ever heard.” He had a compa- ObituariesH and tributes recycled the will seek vainly for ostentation, no grand rable reaction to her interpretation of most striking superlatives and offered ‘Hatto’ moments, simply the music. . . . the Godowsky. up a few new ones (“as completely sat- For her, ‘Hatto’ was simply not the im- Nicholas’s encounter with Hatto re- isfying a pianist as anyone in the history portant one.” sulted in two articles—one in Interna- of recorded music,” “a national trea- Yet, even as Hatto was being eulo- tional Piano, in January, 2006, and one in sure”). Her funeral took place eleven gized, fresh suspicions were being voiced Gramophone, two months later. A feature days later, at a crematory in Cambridge, by Gramophone readers. In the July is- in Gramophone (“the world’s unrivaled a secular ceremony orchestrated, in sue, Nicholas responded indignantly to authority on classical music since 1923”) every sense, by Barrington-Coupe. unspecified “letters, phone calls, and a was bound to draw attention, especially Twenty or so mourners listened to plethora of blogs from people who a) given that Nicholas declared, “I have no music—Bach, Brahms, Chopin, De- think I am in the pay of her record la- hesitation in saying that Joyce Hatto is bussy—from a Hatto sampler CD is- bel, b) doubt that the recordings are the one of the greatest pianists I have ever sued by Concert Artist a few months work of just one pianist, c) are sure that heard.” He not only introduced Hatto to earlier. Humility was the theme of Bar- the recordings are edited performances of

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 72—133SC. the highbrow equivalent of trash talk, a volleying of erudite insults between Hat- Before that altering apple to’s most ardent boosters and Lemken We were one with everything and various agnostics. The vituperation No sense of self and other lasted for days, and the eavesdroppers No self-consciousness included not only the usual hobbyists (as But now we have to grapple well as, presumably, Barrington-Coupe) With this man-made world backfring but also a group of scholars at the Cen- Keeping one eye on our brother’s deadly selfshness tre for the History and Analysis of Re- corded Music (charm), at the Univer- Everyone’s a victim here sity of London. For more than a year, a Nobody’s hands are clean musicologist named Nicholas Cook and There’s so very little left of wild Eden Earth a postdoctoral fellow, Craig Sapp, had So near the jaws of our machines been immersed in a comparative study We live in these electric scabs of performances of selected Chopin ma- These lesions once were lakes zurkas, using software that depicted the We don’t know how to shoulder blame similarities between recordings with Or learn from past mistakes bright-colored geometric shapes. So who will come to save the day? Although Cook and Sapp knew Mighty Mouse…? Superman…? nothing about Hatto, they included her Bad Dreams are good in the study because she, along with In the Great Plan about thirty other pianists, had re- corded the complete mazurkas. They In the dark entered into their database two tracks A shining ray from her CD “Chopin: The Mazur- I heard a three-year-old boy say kas,” which, according to an accompa- Bad Dreams are good nying booklet from Concert Artist, had In the Great Plan been recorded in April, 1997, and March, 2004. On the CD slipcase, the —Joni Mitchell latter date was changed to December, 2005, but that discrepancy was trivial in light of what a digital analysis revealed: the Hatto version and a 1988 recording her pupils, d) suspect that Miss Hatto has corded in Cambridge in 1989”—the by , a Belgrade-born solo- never been ill and could not possibly have unreleased tape that Barry had sent him ist, were identical. As Cook later told survived cancer for 25 years, e) that the after his visit to Royston. Did this in- the BBC, his initial reaction was “prima whole thing is a scam.” He invited “any- formation satisfy Lemken? Nein. If it facie, one of these people doesn’t exist.” one who has any evidence whatsoever of hadn’t been published, it didn’t count. A Google search confirmed that both fraud, deception, or similar activity related Then, on January 22nd of this year, pianists were demonstrably real—Hatto to Miss Hatto and her record company” a participant in the newsgroup who had existed, and Indjic had recently to come forward, with the proviso that identified himself as Seth Horus—a played in Poland—which left the un- such evidence “must stand up in a court pseudonym that referred to ancient avoidable implication that one was a of law.” Egyptian mythology—posted this: plagiarist. The culprit seemed obvious, The day before Hatto’s funeral, the “After hearing so much about Joyce but Cook and Sapp weren’t eager to usually even-tempered Ernst Lumpe Hatto, I started purchasing some of her broadcast the news. For one thing, Brit- confronted Peter Lemken during an recordings. While nothing I have heard ish libel laws would have placed on exchange in the newsgroup rec.music. is bad (in fact, I am glad I bought these them the burden of proof that a fraud classical.recordings. The general topic CDs), I have noticed something eerie: had been perpetrated. was live performance versus studio re- that the pianist playing the Mozart Despite their caution, Cook and cording, and Lemken, ever the skeptic, sonatas cannot be the pianist playing Sapp underestimated the potential re- asked whether anyone had ever recorded Prokofiev or the pianist playing Albé- percussions. During a charm staff a Hatto live performance. The gist of niz. I have the distinct feeling of being seminar on January 26th, when they Lumpe’s reply, written in German, was the victim of some sort of hoax. Does discreetly reported on their research, a that Lemken had some nerve. Amateur anyone else share these feelings? What stunned colleague who had been mon- recordings of Hatto in concert, he said, is actually known about the artist and itoring the online debate proclaimed, circulated privately, and he personally the circumstances? I looked on the Web “You’re sitting on a volcano.” Cook and owned a performance of “Elgar’s First and all I can find is some sort of official Sapp considered getting in touch with Symphony in the two-handed piano story, nothing independent.” an editor at Gramophone. Instead, they transcription by Sigfrid Karg-Elert, re- Much of the ensuing discussion was spent a couple of weeks writing and cir-

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 73—133SC.—#2 page—text changes culating a draft article titled “Purely passage where the performer has more up by 0.02 per cent. Distler had sensed Coincidental? Joyce Hatto and Cho- leeway in the interpretation. In slower that another track wasn’t lifted from the pin’s Mazurkas.” They were still decid- pieces, it’s easier to hear subtleties. I Simon recording, and Rose confirmed ing how to proceed when, in mid-Feb- was ninety-five per cent certain that this: it had been appropriated from a ruary, corroboration materialized an most of the tracks were the same. So 1993 release by the Japanese pianist Mi- ocean away. I didn’t know what to do. If she was noru Nojima. Again, the timing had On February 12th, in Mount Ver- the one that was copying, part of me been tweaked, but the waveform re- non, New York, Brian Ventura received didn’t want it to come out. The whole vealed the truth. “No pianist who’s ever a package that he had been anticipat- Joyce Hatto story seemed so terrific lived could replicate a performance to ing for a long time. An avoca- you just wanted it to be true. anything like the degree of accuracy tional pianist, Ventura worked I didn’t want to bring down heard here,” Rose wrote. “It’s simply not on Wall Street and had a fifty- the story.” humanly possible, whatever the degree minute commute, which he of Ms. Hatto’s claimed virtuosity.” usually spent listening to an ithin seventy-two On the evening of February 15th, iPod. He had learned of Hatto hours, the truth had Gramophone published the story online, not long before she died, and notW so much come out as ex- appending a report from Rose that ren- in the months that followed ploded. Ventura had sent an dered the evidence unassailable. When he closely read reviews of her e-mail to Jed Distler, a com- Cook and Sapp heard the news the next recordings until he knew which ones poser and reviewer who contributed to morning, they knew that charm could he wanted to own. Placing an order Gramophone and had published posi- freely disclose its discovery of the lar- turned out to be more of a chore than tive Hatto reviews in the online pub- ceny of Indjic’s Chopin mazurkas. In he expected, but he eventually estab- lication ClassicsToday. Distler later the days that followed, Rose continued lished a friendly correspondence with wrote, “After careful comparison of to analyze recordings and post updates: Barrington-Coupe. Weeks passed, the actual Simon performances to the The Rachmaninoff concertos were not nothing came in the mail, and he wrote Hatto, it appeared to me that 10 out of Hatto but Bronfman. And had Hatto, to Barry, who explained that the ship- 12 tracks showed remarkable similar- Köhler, and the National Philharmonic- ment had been delayed because one se- ity in terms of tempi, accents, dynam- Symphony Orchestra collaborated on lection was unavailable. So Ventura ics, balances, etc.” When Distler next the Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2? No, asked Barry to substitute Liszt’s “Tran- tested a CD of Rachmaninoff ’s Sec- but , Bernard Hai- scendental Studies.” ond and Third Piano Concertos— tink, and the had. Ventura unwrapped the “Studies” ostensibly Hatto playing with the elu- Each new revelation increased the sus- disk first. He placed it in his comput- sive René Köhler and his equally picion that every Concert Artist release er’s disk drive and, through Apple’s elusive National Philharmonic-Sym- credited to Joyce Hatto within the iTunes software, connected to Grace- phony Orchestra—Gracenote identi­ past decade was the creation of “Joyce note, an Internet database of CDs. fied the soloist as Yefim Bronfman, Hatto.” According to Gracenote, which identi- accompanied by the Philharmonia Or- In the Usenet and Yahoo groups, fies a CD by the durations of its indi- chestra, conducted by Esa-Pekka Sa- critics who had been most enamored of vidual tracks, Ventura had loaded the lonen. Distler reported his findings to Hatto found themselves, predictably, “Transcendental Studies,” but the pia- Ventura via e-mail, and sent copies to objects of opprobrium. (Tantalizingly, nist was a Hungarian named László the editors of Gramophone and Classics shortly before Gramophone’s public dis- Simon. László Simon? Ventura weighed Today and to and closure someone calling himself Simon the possibilities: Gracenote might two other Gramophone critics who had Lasso—in hindsight, an obvious play be mistaken (mislabellings had been championed Hatto. He also wrote to on László Simon—had warned partici- known to occur), or someone named Barrington-Coupe—whom he had pants on rec.music.classical.recordings, László Simon had recorded the same met in London the previous fall—and “Some of you are going to be looking music with precisely the same track tim- Barry “quickly replied, claiming not to very silly indeed over the coming ings. When he listened during his com- know what had happened, and to be as weeks.”) Among shell-shocked Hatto- mute the next morning, he felt “from puzzled as I was.” philes, collective healing took the form the very first piece, it was a remark- James Inverne, the editor of Gramo- of a debunking blitz, a competitive able recording.” On his office computer, phone, enlisted an audio expert, Andrew quest to unlock the mysteries of the er- he went to Amazon.com and found Rose, who examined the waveforms of satz œuvre. Within ten days, twenty- a listing for Simon’s record, includ- the Simon and the Hatto recordings. three identifications had been made. ing one-minute clips for most of the The visual match was exact, and Rose (By last week, the tally was up to sixty- tracks. knew the result even before listening. eight.) As with the Liszt “Transcenden- “I started listening,” he recalled. Ten of the twelve tracks of the Concert tal Studies” and the Godowsky Chopin “Going back and forth between the Artist “Transcendental Studies” were Studies, many CDs had been cobbled iPod and the Amazon clips for individ- “without a shadow of a doubt” per- together from multiple sources, which ualistic things—sudden changes in dy- formed by Simon, though the timing of meant that, unless Barrington-Coupe namics or ornaments, or a cadenzalike one track had been subtly altered—sped (or a co-conspirator, if any existed)

74 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 17, 2007

TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 74—133SC.—live spot art r16584D_RD, pls inspect and report on quality came clean, the effort to unearth the transcript provided by Barry. Did she or at the Jagiellonian University, in Kra- genuine provenances could take years, didn’t she meet the celebrated French kow. Then: “In the Polish capital, un- and was still bound to fall short. For pianist Alfred Cortot, charm him into able to join the Conservatoire because instance, no one has yet identified the inviting her to play for him, and, in later of his Jewish faith, he studied privately pianist in the glorious recording of the years, often accompany him on visits to with the pianist Stanislaw Spinalski. “Mephisto Waltz”—assuming (the de- the National Gallery? Was she or wasn’t In 1940, his left hand was crushed ir- fault assumption) that it wasn’t Hatto she, as a young woman, awarded “a reparably by a young German ‘officer,’ herself. Bach Prize by Michael Tippett,” the so-called. He survived the Ghetto but The recrimination directed at the British composer? In recounting details in the summer of 1942 was deported critics who had been duped was both of her performances in Russia and Po- to Treblinka.” understandable and overwrought. In land, Hatto included a heartrending vi- Except that, as Lemken learned when 1992, in Gramophone, the critic Bryce gnette of a visit to Auschwitz. Who, he sent a query in early 2006 to the Jagi- Morrison found that Yefim Bronfman’s until the scandal broke, would have ellonian University, no record existed of Rachmaninoff Third Concerto lacked dared to question the credibility of such a student named René Köhler. Further- “the sort of angst or urgency that has reminiscences? more, the university never had a music endeared Rachmaninov to millions” The one person who did was Peter department. In a Usenet discussion, he and that “Bronfman sounds oddly un- Lemken, whose acerbic manner, along demanded, “What kind of frame of moved by Rachmaninov ’s intensely sla- with the fact that he happened to be mind must one possess to invent a fake vonic idiom. In the sunset coda of the German, subjected him to nasty insin- Holocaust-survivor biography?” Adagio his playing is devoid of glamour uations. Lemken’s suspicions about and in the finale’s fugue he lacks crisp- Hatto—fuelled by his incredulity at s Hatto’s reputation collapsed, ness and definition.” Fifteen years later, the tragic fable of René Köhler—owed Barry did his best to stay in char- he wrote of Hatto’s release of the same as much to logic as to prescience. Ac- acter,A beginning with a shameless de- recording: “stunning . . . truly great . . . cording to Barry, before the Second nial. When confronted by James In- among the finest on record . . . with a World War Köhler had studied music verne, the Gramophone editor, he said special sense of its Slavic melancholy.” Ates Orga and Jeremy Nicholas were taken to task for not having demanded more extensive documentation from Hatto. The various sources cited by Orga in his lengthy profile on MusicWeb had an uncanny tendency (a) to be no longer alive or (b) to originate and ter- minate at the intersection of Hatto and Barrington-Coupe. “I was aware that there was a lot of obscurity, absence of paper trails,” Orga conceded. “One takes a certain amount on faith. I cross-referenced a few things and came up with answers and I cross-referenced a few others and came up with blanks. The CDs that had been sent to me were extremely good. Whatever critical comments I offered about recordings purporting to be by her, I have to stand by. It’s only when you begin to realize that they’re not by her . . . I didn’t give her any scripted questions. I felt she gave me some very, very good answers, intelli- gent, alert. Looking back, maybe there was a lot of name-dropping. But what she was saying I felt was musically right.” The long-dead Burnett James sup- posedly recorded his interview with Hatto in 1973. But there was no evi- dence that it had appeared in print be- fore it turned up on MusicWeb, via a

TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 75—133SC.—live art a12699 that he’d been warned that the maga- the time, the judge admonished him the most part, the pianists whose work zine was working on a story and was and four co-defendants, “These were he poached eschewed stylistic idiosyn- aware of the László Simon duplication blatant and impertinent frauds, carried crasies: no Glenn Gould, no Vladimir but couldn’t account for it. out in my opinion rather clumsily, but Horowitz. To simplify the editing, he “How do you explain the Rach- such was your conceit that you thought said, he began to lift somewhat longer maninoff?” Inverne asked. yourselves smart enough to get away passages, along the way realizing that he “Well, I can’t,” Barry replied, add- with it.” could alter the result by digitally speed- ing—with what Inverne deemed Within a couple of news cycles, Barry ing them up or slowing them down. His “breathtaking audacity”—“If anyone confessed—sort of—in a letter to the motive, he maintained, had never been can give me any clues to help explain it, head of the Swedish label that had re- mercenary; it had been to salvage the re- I’d be very grateful.” leased László Simon’s Liszt recording. spect and adulation that had been un- An interview he gave to the Daily The executive shared excerpts with fairly denied Hatto—by mean-spirited Telegraph bore the headline “my wife’s Gramophone, which paraphrased Barry’s critics and by her unfortunate illness. In virtuoso recordings are genu- mea culpa as “I Did It for My Wife”— this scenario, Hatto remained heroic ine.” She was the “sole pianist on those as if they were both victims of his gallant and sympathetic, and, implicitly, so did recordings,” he declared, and he was uxoriousness. “It” referred not to boot- her faithful mate. present “at all the important sessions,” legging entire performances but to hav- Barry’s “confession” aside, the evi- in his capacity as recording engineer. “If ing borrowed bits of other recordings to dence pointed toward sustained whole- it was all a fake, why would I put my solve technical problems. Hatto had sale plagiarism rather than piecemeal wife’s name on it?” he said. “I would played all the pieces herself, Barry ex- peccadilloes. When Ernst Lumpe re- have put someone else, some Russian plained, but they had been marred by in- flected upon his relationship with Barry, name, and we would have sold ten times voluntary grunting noises prompted by he recalled the unexpected gift that he’d as many. The English don’t like suc- the pain from her advancing cancer. So received from him in 1989: the tape of cess—you are successful for a year, then he had searched for recordings by artists Hatto’s recital performance of Elgar’s they start putting the boot in.” with similar styles and spliced patches First Symphony. An acquaintance of The telltale Brahms Piano Concerto into her work. “My wife was completely Lumpe’s suggested that the actual pia- No. 2? “They . . . say that I swiped the unaware that I did this,” he wrote. “I nist must have been David Owen Nor- Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, prob- simply let her hear . . . the finished edit- ris, a noted Elgar interpreter; virtually no ably the greatest orchestra in Europe. ing that she thought was completely her other artist played it in public. Lumpe It’s ludicrous.” own work.” took a fresh look at a note that Barry had Barry’s bravado diminished after the In his funeral eulogy, when Barry written at the time, which he’d saved. It Daily Mail dug up a 1966 conviction spoke of there being “no grand ‘Hatto’ said, in part, “David Owen Norris is for tax fraud, for which he’d been fined moments,” he might well have been playing the Elgar Transcription for the and sentenced to a year in prison. At describing his own methodology. For BBC in a month or two. He played it a couple of years ago in London and has since worked through it with Joyce and has, as a consequence, got the speeds up a little.” Which doesn’t quite square with what Norris told Lumpe: “I never heard of Joyce Hatto until the recent news items.” So Barry had been placed at a crime scene, holding a smoking gun, at least a decade earlier than the confirmed pla- giarisms suggested. The only surprise, really, was that a Hatto CD of the Elgar had never been released. How long, exactly, had Concert Art- ist actually been Con Artist? Did it mat- ter? To fixate upon this or that fugitive datum, or upon the technical details of how the CDs might have been con- cocted, was to overlook Barry’s grander accomplishment. He had not merely pinched or polished a few, mostly mar- ginal, recordings. With his collection of more than a hundred Joyce Hatto CDs, “Of course, after I became a PETA member I had to get rid of the heads.” Barry had created the most diversely

TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 76—133SC.—live art a12405 prolific and gifted pianist to emerge in decades, with a corresponding narrative that aroused the esteem and good will of music lovers around the world. Since early in his checkered career, he had deftly manipulated musical identities. What he confected on his wife’s behalf, in her twilight, was vastly more auda- cious than anything he had pulled off during his “super-bargain” years. The alchemy that transformed Joyce Hatto into “Joyce Hatto” was, in its twisted way, a tour de force, a dazzling work of art, literally the performance of a lifetime.

terrific amount of labor went into the deception. Case in point:A René Köhler. Barry had first deployed the Köhler pseudonym in the fifties, but until Peter Lemken raised questions a layered biography didn’t become necessary. In March, 2006, responding to an e-mail from “Quit asking if I’m O.K. If I’m ever O.K., I’ll let you know.” Lemken, who stated that he was pre- paring an article about Hatto and had questions about Köhler (place and •• date of birth and death, location of gravesite, etc.), Barry invited Lemken while added some filigree to the Köhler Hatto collector tracked down by the to Cambridge to meet “Miss Hatto,” saga: he was born in the Weimar re- BBC recounted that he’d bought a who “would be happy . . . to talk over gion, travelled on a Swiss passport, and hundred or so CDs directly from Con- with you any aspect of her playing, had a grandnephew, “now safely settled cert Artist and that, during a twenty- teaching or recording work.” Online, in Israel,” who was “a musician and seven-month period, he’d exchanged Lemken had speculated that “St. budding conductor.” Then this in- roughly twelve hundred e-mails with Mark’s Church, Croydon”—identified spired bit about the grandnephew: “We more than a dozen Concert Artist em- on Concert Artist CD packages as a are trying to make arrangements to ployees—or, anyway, with that many venue for Hatto’s recording sessions bring him to London when he has Concert Artist e-mail addressees. The with Köhler’s orchestra but strangely finished his National Service in the Is- collector was under the impression that missing from maps—was yet another raeli Army. We have offered recordings the company employed thirty-two peo- fiction. with Joyce Hatto, if she is still able to ple in four locations. In fact, Concert Thus Barry, blithely: “In addition, undertake such a commitment, and Artist’s Hatto endeavors appear to have whilst you are in Cambridge, I would be have offered to finance a career launch been a one-person operation—two, if able to show you the recording facilities at the Royal Festival Hall with as many Hatto counts. that we [have] available. . . . I would be members of the original National Phil- If so, how much did she know? Or very happy to arrange for you to visit a harmonic-Symphony Orchestra as can need to know? Among the artifacts ‘non-existent’ church in Croydon and be reassembled.” that made a compelling case for her speak with the priest in charge of it. It is hard to fathom what was moti- complicity were the Rachmaninoff That would occupy a full day going vating Barry at that moment. (Buying and Brahms concerto recordings. Even from Cambridge but I would do my time, perhaps? Hatto would be dead if one conceded some variant of Bar- very best to accompany you myself or within two months. Delusional gran- ry’s alibi for her—she recorded every- provide a member of staff to accompany diosity? Pathological duplicity?) He thing, he tinkered, she heard the result you. If your time schedule allows you, stood as much chance of reassembling and somehow remained oblivious of Miss Hatto would raise no objections to “members of the original National his misdemeanors—that couldn’t ex- my inviting you to one of her recording Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra” plain how an artist capable of func- sessions.” as he did of producing, in the flesh, tioning at such a high level wouldn’t After Lemken neglected to call this Wilhelm Havagesse. There was no St. have mused, “Why don’t I recall any bluff—he didn’t feel like travelling to Mark’s Church in Croydon. Nor, most recording sessions with an eighty-piece England—Barry reiterated the invita- likely, was there a staff member avail- orchestra?” tion two months later, having mean- able to escort Lemken anywhere. A When Christopher Howell, one of

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 77—133SC.—live art a12692 the critics with whom both Hatto and for our conversation. Many American soprano. I used to be a regular carol Barry corresponded—in exceptionally servicemen were stationed in the area singer. Singing all the soprano parts. recondite discussions of piano tech- during the Second World War, and Why can’t I think of the name of that? nique and music history—sifted for there was a large American military Well, it was hit by a rocket, you see.” clues in the correspondence he’d saved, cemetery nearby, in Cambridge. “Joyce he realized that the first letter he’d re- occasionally had young pupils who e sat in the music room, which ceived from Hatto was “chilling evi- would say negative things about Amer- was furnished with an oak dence that, if she really wrote it, she icans, and she would always correct table,W a couple of bookcases and arm- was involved up to the hilt.” He re- them by pointing out how wonderful chairs, a sideboard, a leather settee, called, “The subject was ‘her’ record- the Americans had been during the and a piano. Oriental rugs were scat- ing of the Chopin Mazurkas, and that war,” he said. “She liked to go to the tered over wall-to-wall crimson car- is now known to be the work of Eugen cemetery occasionally and leave bou- peting; lace curtains framed a bay win- Indjic.” Howell also noticed that cer- quets of flowers. I remember one time, dow that faced the street; sheer curtains tain pianists’ names were often mis- we arrived and we met this elderly covered French doors that led to the spelled in the letters signed by Barry American gentleman standing next to back yard. Hatto had died in this but the ones ostensibly from Hatto a wall engraved with the names of fallen room. Even minus the hospital bed in got them right. His inference: “This soldiers. As he was touching one of the which she had spent the last weeks of would seem to prove at least that two names . . .” her life, it felt overstuffed. There was a different people were writing.” Over I more or less knew what he was surfeit of tchotchkes—life-size plaster all, he felt, the hoax had been “thought going to say next. All Barry knew about cats beneath the piano, a plaster squir- through very carefully.” Peculiar errors me, from a few phone calls and e-mails, rel and rabbit flanking a brass vase of in Hatto’s letters, however, led him was that I was a polite-sounding Amer- artificial flowers atop the table, and as- also to contemplate “the possibility . . . ican reporter. That sufficed; he was born sorted cloisonné bowls. The BBC had of a person with almost total recall of to ingratiate. reported that an English online re- the past but living in a present of her “. . . tears were running down his tailer had handled a hundred thousand own imagining.” cheeks, and he turned to us and said, dollars’ worth of Hatto CDs; definitive ‘This is all I have left of my son.’ ” sales figures were impossible to come ith that hypothesis in mind, I Christopher Howell, the MusicWeb by. But if the hoax had proved materi- recently took a train from Lon- critic, had written of Barry’s and Hatto’s ally rewarding there was no sign of it donW to Royston for a conversation with propensity for “grafting past realities here. Barrington-Coupe. I went with some onto present falsities with scarcely a false The dominant object, of course, questions but certainly not with accusa- step”—and how, simultaneously, “the was the piano, a mahogany Steinway tions. I didn’t plan to bring up, for in- work proceeded of buttering up anybody concert grand that Rachmaninoff, so stance, a story in that perceived to be of possible use.” So I’d one was told, had used for concerts quoted Hatto’s radiologist to the effect been buttered. In the course of the next outside London. I did my best to that she’d received her first cancer diag- five hours, he dissembled and I silently imagine it being routinely shuttled be- nosis in 1992 rather than in the early marvelled at his technique. He seemed tween the house and Hatto’s apocry- seventies, as legend had it. to make things up effortlessly as he went phal recording venues. During a radio Barry greeted me on the station plat- along. As he angled for my sympathy interview broadcast in New Zealand a form. Despite protestations to reporters and confidence, he remained courteous few months before she died, she had that he was in fragile health, he struck and affable, a perfectly decent-seeming been asked about those exact logisti- me as quite vigorous: a trim fellow (“I fellow. cal arrangements and had ignored the can still get into my Army uniform”) in At one point, he asked me if I was question. The most quotable quote his mid-seventies, dressed in a tan rain- Jewish. “I had a Jewish doctor, solicitor, from that interview referred to her coat and black leather gloves, taupe accountant,” he said warmly. “They all parents, during her childhood: “They slacks, an olive tweed jacket, a green said, ‘You’re more Jewish than the Jews.’ always said, ‘Just make certain you’re shirt, a brown print necktie. He had the At school I used to be given a hard time not a disappointment. Don’t think look of an indoorsman—pale, fleshy by the other boys because I looked Jew- you’re so important.’ And so I’ve never face, bony nose, thick eyebrows, ruffled ish. They kept it up until, finally, just to thought I’m so important. . . . I expect brownish-gray hair, black glasses. It was make them stop, I said, ‘O.K., I am.’ ” even Mozart was a disappointment to a fifteen-minute walk through the vil- He went on, “Joyce, when we met, his father.” lage—past the usual shops and cafés, an thought I was Jewish. I told her, ‘Oh, Perched on the piano bench, with ivied Anglican church, a park—to the no, when I was a boy I was thinking of his legs crossed and his hands—he still small housing development on a cul-de- going into the Church. I sang in the wore a gold wedding band—clasped sac where, he said, he and Hatto had choir.’ ” around one knee, Barry said, “Her moved from Hampstead Garden Sub- “What church did you belong to?” I mother was the kind of person who, if urb in 1976. asked. God himself came down, she would Along the way, I asked about “Oh, dear. I’m trying to think of have found fault. It wasn’t until the Royston, and his answer set the tone the church I sang in when I was a boy last six weeks of Joyce’s life that she

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 78—133SC.—#2 page—text change began to tell me some of the things “Her mother took to me. But when what a young woman really needed to that had happened to her as a child. I she started criticizing Joyce, trying to know was how to prepare a roast. Years knew that she hadn’t had a very happy put me off, it was exactly what my fa- later, she failed to impress when audi- childhood. And this is the reason. ther did when he came to meet her tioning for the Proms, an annual series In life, there are amazing coinci- family. He said the same things about of prestigious summer concerts pro- dences. The very first afternoon I’d me. Her mother was very talented, duced by the BBC. Barry told me, taken her out, we went rowing in had a beautiful singing voice, and so “One of the reasons that the establish- Hyde Park and we passed another did Joyce. I think her mother resented ment didn’t take to her was that her boat with identical twins, boys. Af- her success. She wouldn’t go to her whole technique was different from the terwards, we had a cup of tea beside concerts but would tell everybody that English way of playing. She played the Serpentine, and as we were sitting we hadn’t given her tickets. Joyce with a more open hand. The thumb there Joyce said, ‘I was a twin. I had would be shut in the cupboards when didn’t tuck itself under. A lot of techni- a brother who was born dead.’ The she was a little girl, and her mother cal schools have all this preparation of amazing thing was that I was a twin would lock the piano. She did it very the hand—you’ve got to tuck the thumb and my sister was born dead. Conse- cleverly so the father didn’t know. I under.” quently, my father wanted a daughter liked him. He was a very nice man. He Hatto either had or had not studied and her mother wanted a son. And had cancer as well. Joyce got her sto- composition with the eminences Má- both parents treated us in exactly the icism from him. He was rather a Jane tyás Seiber and Paul Hindemith, who, same way. The very first day we met— Austen character—he wasn’t one of by the time she began invoking their it was a Saturday, almost exactly this life’s happy people.” names in program and liner notes— time of year—we felt a bond with The most plausible theory of the Seiber died in 1960, Hindemith in each other and we had it all our life. motivation behind the hoax was quint- 1963—were no longer in a position to People say it was romantic. It was al- essentially British: a revenge tale fuelled confirm or deny. “She did do a bit of most a brotherly-sisterly bond. It by class resentment. Hatto had de- composition, yes,” Barry said. “But she seemed to transcend just ordinary mar­ scribed to interviewers being conde- destroyed everything she had. Why? riage and sex and everything else. scended to during an adolescent audi- She thought she was criticized enough. Sometimes we didn’t need to talk to tion at the Royal Academy of Music. A She didn’t have a sacrificial burning, each other—we just knew what the career as a concert soloist was a daunt- but she put the whole lot into the bin. other was thinking. ingly lofty ambition, she was advised; I asked her ‘Why do that?’ and she

“I find your ruling on the avocado-grapefruit-and-pomegranate salad overly narrow.”

TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 79—133SC.—live art a12704 said, ‘Well, they criticize everything I she was the musician behind them. dered “whether her technique is really on do, and the last bit would be to criti- They both could enjoy the accolades top of the difficulties of this music.” He cize my composition.’ ” rolling in. Sweet revenge for what was concluded, “It remains a small, rather felt to be insufficient recognition of past pallid performance.” nother question I didn’t bother achievements and a means of financial asking Barry is whether Hatto was survival. A more practical form of folie n a moment of contrition, Barry said, inA on the con. The emerging consensus à deux.” “I can see why I’ve been criticized for of people close to the scandal was that Ates Orga, for his part, had recon- whatI I’ve done. Apart from being un- indeed she had been. Earlier that week, sidered Hatto’s accounts of concert lawful, it wasn’t right. I know I shouldn’t I’d met with Jeremy Nicholas, who tours in Eastern Europe. He said, “I have done it.” Then he got over it. “The showed me a document that appeared, can’t think of many English artists in letters I’ve been getting—the nasty like the concerto recordings, to place a the fifties, sixties, or early seventies ones—tell me at least I could publish the second smoking gun in Hatto’s hand. It going to the Soviet Union or Poland names of the wonderful artists who involved the Godowsky Chopin Stud- unless they were big-time competition played this work. But there aren’t any ies—upon reflection, hardly the most players.” Barry had told Orga that Hatto ‘wonderful artists.’ The things that she judicious theft. When the audio consul- hadn’t bothered to save copies of her re- was playing, if it was very difficult, it was tant retained by Gramophone analyzed views. Yet he was able to produce re- fine, she didn’t make noises—the me- Hatto’s Godowsky CD, he found that it views—O.K., not actual clippings but chanical memory was all going right. Al- had been pieced together from record- typed transcripts—from her putative most on autopilot, I suppose; her fingers ings by Marc-André Hamelin, Carlo trips to Russia and Scandinavia in the would just be there. The body has learnt, Grante, and ; Barry had early and mid-seventies. The prose had you’ve gone up and down those difficult covered up the crime by shrinking the the same conquering-heroine flavor as passages so many times. It’s like a hur- timings of various tracks. In March, her liner notes: “Her performance of the dler. Sometimes they don’t know what 2006, after Nicholas published his rev- Brahms Piano Concerto in D minor they’re doing—the brain doesn’t but the erential article about Hatto in Gramo- was a triumph. The technical virtuosity body does. What was difficult for her, phone, he received from her a printed was compelling in its complete noncha- where the problems occurred, was im- program from a famous 1938 concert at lance but it was the blazing passion that mediately before she started she’d take a the Royal Albert Hall, during which brought a huge audience to its feet”; deep breath. Pull herself and stretch, Rachmaninoff performed. A handwrit- “Miss Joyce Hatto, an English woman take a deep breath, and the pain would ten note said, “We have looked after this pianist, proved herself to be a pianist of start. She couldn’t seem to stop herself Rachmaninoff programme for many unique technical talent and possessed of from doing that. Consequently, when it years, but feel it should now be passed much more than exceptional musicality. was a slow piece, that’s when the prob- on to you. Also I have re-worked the Her power to hold an audience and lems came in, because only her mind was Godowsky, as I’m always trying to move them to near hysteria is rarely en- being engaged and the pain had a chance achieve the impossible and I hope you countered”; “Joyce Hatto completely to take over. Very often the patching had will enjoy the result. With all good dominated her Steinway and it was very to be done there. We never used a fa- wishes, Joyce.” noticeable that the orchestral players mous pianist or anything to cover up any Nicholas wanted to know, “Why is were perspiring and not this soloist! The technical deficiencies. There weren’t she saying ‘I have reworked the Go- explosive reception she received de- any. It was so remarkable—someone dowsky’ if she didn’t play them in the manded six encores.” said the piano had a hold on her, but I first place?” The few reviews of Hatto’s work that would say she had a hold on the piano. Among the most diligent and dis- can be verified as genuine are less kind. It did what she wanted it to do, in a re- passionate students of the Hatto hoax is In 1953, a critic from the London Times markable way, too.” Andrys Basten, the woman who had said of a local recital, “Joyce Hatto grap- I listened and wondered: Did he ac- posted the “Mephisto Waltz” on her pled doggedly with too hasty tempi in tually believe any of it? And what had Web site. She is a retired computer con- Mozart’s D Minor piano concerto and she believed? Had Joyce Hatto died sultant who lives in Northern Califor- was thereby impeded from conveying happy? nia. According to her, the Godowsky significant feelings towards the work, es- Barry’s gift for artifice notwithstand- and other examples in which recordings pecially in quick figuration.” In a 1961 ing, he’d spun such dense layers of fab- have been sped up or slowed down— Gramophone assessment of Hatto’s LP of rication that inevitably he lapsed into “with results which some listeners even Rachmaninoff ’s Second Piano Con- self-contradiction. When I asked how now can find more pleasing than the certo, the conductor Trevor Harvey won- Hatto felt about the attention she’d re- original pianists’ versions”—suggest ceived during her final years, he said, that Hatto and Barry had set out to cre- “You see, the thing about her was it ate “their own ideal versions, using her meant her life hadn’t been a waste of musical ideas and his technological time. But she didn’t glory in anything, know-how.” In Basten’s interpretation really. Music was kind of an essential of their interpretation, “He was the pro- thing. If there was a criticism, she would ducer of these improved versions, while say, ‘Well, I know what I know.’ ” In the

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TNY—2007_09_17—PAGE 80—133SC.—live spot art r16584E_RD, pls inspect and report on quality next breath, he mentioned that, shortly before she died, when he’d shown her a favorable review of one of “her” CDs, “She looked at me and said, ‘It’s just too late.’ ” In the wake of the scandal, some lis- teners had obtained copies of Hatto’s early LPs and detected genuine prom- ise. Christopher Howell, after listening to her 1963 recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A Major, said that “there is a certain glow to the tone. The slow movement is beautifully shaped while the finale, at a pretty fast tempo, has a joyous spring. Overall, the performance has a certain luminosity of spirit.” But it was indeed too late. From papers atop the table, Barry produced a condolence note that he’d re- ceived from a Dutch fan of Hatto’s, just before the hoax was exposed: “Dear Sir! First I must condole you with your wife. It’s a great loss, not only for you, but also for the lovers of piano music. I am a great admirer of your wife’s records, the first of them I bought in the sixties. . . . “Now hold that.” It’s a pity she is only now recognized as the great pianist she always was.” When I handed it back, he said, •• “In the end, you just sort of shrug your shoulders. I haven’t made a lot of friends, providing a balm for her failed ambi- was rather ageless. Children and young actually. I suppose it’s because Joyce and tion. Still, how satisfying could it have girls would discuss things with her that I were married for almost fifty years. been to live merely the simulacrum of they wouldn’t discuss with their parents. I really haven’t had time for friend- success—to read about “her” inspiring People never thought of her as being el- ships. It is very strange. I’ve found that renaissance, to hear “her” music so ex- derly, and, frankly, neither did I. About the ones I thought were friends have travagantly extolled? The name-drop- two years before she died, I said, ‘You to pontificate. But I have one friend ping, the evasiveness, the delusional know, Joyce, you don’t look any different who’s been wonderful. When I told stories, the woundedness, the self-pity, from when we first met.’ She had a re- him what I’d done, there was no lecture; the resentment toward the establish- markable youthfulness. And yet when he simply said, ‘I understand why you ment: it formed a ziggurat of self-de- she actually died—the moment of death, did it.’ There’s no use having a friend ception. It was also a love story, one that the doctor was on one side and I was on who’s going to lecture you. I think Mar- would have been right at home on Sun- the other—it was as if a sponge wiped lene Dietrich said it best—Joyce and I set Boulevard. her face and her whole personality went both knew Marlene Dietrich. She said, Hatto’s ashes, in a cardboard parcel and there was this old lady. When I went ‘It’s no good forgiving your husband the size of a shoebox, rested on the oak to the undertaker the first time to see her, if you’re going to make him eat it for table. Three days before she died, Bar- I went in and there was this elderly lady breakfast every morning.’ ” rington-Coupe said, he proposed that in this coffin. I looked at her and I came Just about every anecdote Barry they be transported to Chopin’s gar- out smiling and said, ‘That’s the wrong shared, or invented on the spot, con- den, outside Warsaw, but she said that body.’ They said, ‘No, that’s Joyce.’ So I formed to a fundamentally sentimental she wanted them scattered beneath a went back in. She had a little birthmark. narrative that retained at least a quotient conifer in the botanical garden in Cam- I went back in, and there it was. I’ve seen of plausibility, allowing him to harvest bridge. Unfortunately, that wasn’t al- many deaths. Most people I’ve found a bit of sympathy for two lifetimes’ ac- lowed. Another possibility was a pre- in death seem to lose a few years. She cumulation of grievances. Of course, historic burial mound in Royston, but didn’t. The act was over.”  there was a transparent poignancy to the ground there had been sinking and the con: Hatto had possessed genuine was roped off. newyorker.com talent but there had been no brilliant “She died just where you are,” he told career. The con had a genius and the me. “That’s roughly where her bed was. Mark Singer discusses Joyce Hatto, with clips revenge a sweetness, the false persona The amazing thing about her is that she of music and archival interviews.

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