Mark Singer has written a very fine article on the Joyce Hatto scandal for The New Yorker. I have an advance PDF version of it here.

It is absurd to imagine that Joyce Hatto did not know about her faked recordings....

How has Joyce Hatto’s husband, William Barrington-Coupe, been able to get away with his farrago of nonsense about this fraud? Barrington-Coupe’s account has been accepted by the press and the public at large. As numerous headlines put it, he has “come clean.” He “did it out of love.”

“Coming clean” in his fanciful account means that (1) he only started to mix in other pianists’ tracks to cover the grunting of his diseased and suffering wife. (2) All recordings of her mix her work with other pianists. (3) He did it all for her, to make things more bearable. (4) She didn’t know a thing about it. He wins, you see: he is a hero, and she was a mere victim of his kindness. He lied to her, and to everyone else, but don’t be too harsh, since he did it out of love.

This is pluperfect rubbish. No one has detected any mixing of two pianists on the same track in any of her fakes. All known tracks so far are 100% other pianists, with time time compression in some cases (not all), with the effect of making the recordning even faster and more brilliant than the originals.

So much for (1) and (2). As for (3) and (4), Joyce Hatto was a lively, bubbly, intelligent person who promoted these recordings to people, and was familiar with them. She was not at the end of her life anywhere near doddery senility, and seemed to have no intellectual impairment. (Listen to her last radio interview here: no sign of being out of touch.)

Think through the possibilities. It is not implausible to imagine a recording engineer who is also a loving husband slipping a false performance of one track or other into a CD where her performance had fallen short. But we are not talking about a track or two, we are faced here with the biggest single body of pianistic output in recording history (Rubinstein’s lifetime production was less that 100 CDs, but included many, many repetitions of the same pieces). So far, not a single post-1970 recording by Joyce Hatto has turned out not to be a fake.

Her catalogue includes around 30 or so concertos. This is probably more recorded concerto repertoire than Rubinstein and Horowitz combined. All of these CDs have the same non-existent conductor and orchestra. Joyce Hatto was aware of these CDs. This is incompatible with Barrington-Coupe’s claim that she did not know what was going on. In fact, it is a palpable absurdity to imagine she did not know. She signed CDs, she boasted of her exploits! Listen to the radio interviews.

Joyce Hatto knew her catalogue, she knew the claims made about her, she knew the reviews and the critics, and she knew how to charm anyone who talked to her.

As for whether Barrington-Coupe loved his wife, it is doubtless true, but it is entirely beside the point. I’m sure Clyde loved Bonnie too.

The media coverage of the Hatto episode is a lesson in how the news cycle turns over with a story. Barrington-Coupe got in with this last bit of nonsense just at the point when editors were likely getting tired of the story. They don’t care; they have other things to worry about. Oh, journalism!

In sum, based on her letters to critics and her radio interviews, it is my considered opinion that Joyce Hatto, in addition of being a lively, chirpy, witty, bright, and positive person, was also a systematic, methodical liar. The only thing she needed was to be married to a convicted fraudster who was also a recording engineer. And guess what?

Because she was so extremely pleasant and because she was an artist, it has been very difficult for people to accept the notion of her guilt. Con artists are often very engaging people with high IQs. Her positive attitude derived, I imagine, in part from thinking she was going to get away with it. She was very likely having the time of her life, at last the star she’d always longed to be. And, perhaps luckily for her, she died before she was caught out.

Anyway, my New York Times op-ed goes through the issues. Four interesting letters to the editor are included. There is an excellent page by Andrys Basten bringing together information about the Hatto scandal. You can find it here.

I attended the White House Press Correspondents’ Association Annual Dinner in 2006 at the Hinckley Hilton. My account, angled toward a New Zealand audience, can be read here.

In 2003, John Brockman’s annual Edge Question asked for a memo to the President on the premise that he had just appointed you as his Science Advisor. I recently came across my contribution; I had lost track of it. You can read it here. I stand by it still.