Outrageous musical hoax - uncovered with Adobe Audition

They faked my phone interview with R4's Front Row later the same evening as well:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/frontrow/

 

Apparently you got it wrong, Andrew - this comes from the Gramophone statement, now updated:-

"Update, February 20
In a private e-mail to one of our critics, William Barrington-Coupe has refuted any accusations of wrongdoing – adding that a friend of his had compared the Bronfman and Hatto Rachmaninovs and thought the Hatto far superior. Barrington-Coupe also, the critic reported to Gramophone, asserted that Hatto had made the Godowsky recording using her own hand-prepared copies of the scores made when she was 16. He further identified recording venues used for the recordings as mainly colleges and churches where he used mobile recording facilities. He stated his intention to have his own sound engineer prepare his own comparisons. "

Well, that clearly settles the whole matter.  Of course.

Heh, I see now that I revisit Andrew's site - now much updated - that the UK Daily Telegraph has interviewed Mr Barrington-Coupe - see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/20/npiano20.xml - in the face of all the mounting evidence it is hard to see how he can deny that something is more than somewhat odd about these recordings, but I guess he either denies it or lies down under a possible weight of oncoming lawsuits.

The Telegraph wrote:

He disputed the accuracy of the expert analysis of the CDs saying "the evidence that they rely on isn't proven – it would have been possible to change the speed of the recordings until they matched".

Just what sort of a buffoon is this? Of course you could make any recording the same length as any other one. It's the fact that everything else falls into place in exactly the same way when you do it that's a bit of a giveaway, isn't it?

And what the hell does he mean by 'not proven'? What would he actually regard as 'proven' in this case? He's well out of order, because I'm pretty sure that Andrew's evidence would stand up in a court. And hopefully it will come to that, because he really shouldn't be allowed not only to get away with it, but also to compound the felony by not admitting to it. Just as a matter of principle, Barrington-Coupe's behaviour is beginning to hack me off somewhat, I must say. The Telegraph went on to say:

Mr Barrington-Coupe added: ''The items which are being called into question I am not selling now...

I think he must have taken some legal advice here - but if this isn't tantamount to an admission of guilt, I don't know what is.

Somebody should explain to Mr. Barrington-Coupe that, when stuck in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging!

Bob

Why none of the critics discovered the hoax earlier? They shoul;d really know and remeber recordings, not rely on CDDB... OK, they probably listen to 10 CDs a day and they might forget.

But why didn't people who have relatively small CD collections did not discover that? I mean, if you have one or two CDs of a given work, you know them by heart. So if you happen to have a "Hatto's recording" you should get suspicious immediately after you hear the original of the recording.  Why hasn't this happen for years?

And another thing that came to my mind: is there any evidence that Hatto died in 2006, not a quarter of century earlier?

And another thing that came to my mind: is there any evidence that Hatto died in 2006, not a quarter of century earlier?

I don't know, but that would be independently verifiable - it has to be a matter of public record.

Why none of the critics discovered the hoax earlier?.......if you have one or two CDs of a given work, you know them by heart. So if you happen to have a "Hatto's recording" you should get suspicious immediately after you hear the original of the recording.  Why hasn't this happen for years?

I have to say, this was my very first thought when I first heard about the controversy.  These 'experts' are not as clued-up as they might like us to think they are.

When you look, for example, at the possible source of the Chopin Etudes, and find around 500 recordings in the 2005 UK catalogue alone (the most recent I have to hand) your heart sinks. It's also something you take at face value - if you pick up a CD by The Beatles you don't immediately suspect it of being a fake Rolling Stones album, after all.

Looking most recently at a recording on behalf of Hyperion, I noted the following alterations:

1 - L-R channels reversed
2 - Time shifted to make it 2.36% faster
3 - Re-equalised, lifting bass and lower mids, dropping treble
4 - Possible compression, though we have detected gain riding in other recordings

This is a single track in a disc of multiple origins, following another which had been speeded up by 15%. To expect critics to pick up on this one, which is one of the few with little possible source material, is perhaps hard going on them.

Meanwhile I gather the more straight lifts, such as the 1982 Ashkenazy Brahms Concerto, were amongst the very first 'Hatto' CDs of the current crop, and fell quite possibly below the reviewers' collective radar.

I agree that heavily modified versions might have been difficult to be revealed just by ear.  I meant rather these simple transfers. And you're right, there are hundreds or thousands of recording of popular pieces.  But there also probably tens or hundreds of thousands (or more) people with access to Hatto discs.  I am not saying you're wrong with your analyses, I'm sure you're right. I am just wondering why something like I described above (a detection of a recording known by somebody very well) has not happened earlier. 

I am pretty sure that there are at least a few recordings in my collections which I listened to so many times, that I'd get very suspicious if somebody presented them to me under different name. But maybe I'm wrong!

  But there also probably tens or hundreds of thousands (or more) people with access to Hatto discs. 

Well, in view of what we know of the distribution of these discs, I'm not so sure about that. I don't own any, but I rather get the impression that these have been kept out of the hands of a major disk plant. I wonder why?

[only thing really happening]

.
The whole thing is a Hoax. I mean... the Story of a Hoax must be a Hoax.
 
After all, when I check the entertainment news on this side of the Pond, (CBS, CNN, etc),
clearly the only thing really happening is that Britney just checked out of Re-Hab AGAIN! 

P.S.  What's classical Music??
.

Congratulations, Andrew, on the kind of publicity that money can't buy!  (Cool for Audition, too.)  I can't ever remember hearing of Hatto as a piano performance major in college, and of course you won't find her in the New Grove Dictionary (2nd ed) or Baker's -- but all the artists ripped off in her name are!  Steve, thanks for capturing that clip so the rest of us could hear Andrew, and Bobby, thanks for a script that puts to shame what the Academy will be honoring on Sunday!

Steve, thanks for capturing that clip so the rest of us could hear Andrew...

I've actually got a (better quality) recording of the Front Row interview too, but it's rather longer and unless I cleared it somehow, I think it would be a copyright breach to post it. If anybody wants to listen to it for private study purposes, I can email it to them; I think that it will remain available on the Radio4 website for a few days, as well. This does suppose that you actually want to listen to Andrew on a ropey old telephone link...

Well since the previous posting it's all exploded all over again - both with Barrington-Coupe's "sort-of" confession, and with the French media getting wind of my location.

If you'd like to see me struggling to explain this in French, this was the TV report a couple of nights ago - regional initially, but picked up the following day on national TV. The report begins about 1'10" into the programme:

http://tinyurl.com/23x28p

Then click on Mardi 27 Février - it's there for a week, so once it falls off the bottom of the list the media will be no longer available.