It is unfortunate that it takes either seriously enhanced breasts or seriously advanced fraud for a classical music story to make it to the news pages of our enlightened media. More than enough has been written about ‘Hattogate’ already, but – along with the world and his dog – I thought I would throw in my t’pence worth before the sordid saga is relegated to the footnote of classical recording history where it belongs. Given the right director, ‘Hattogate’ has the makings of an excellent noir melodrama, so here is its synopsis: Born in 1928, Joyce Hatto was a more or less unknown British pianist who ‘retired’ from the concert platform she so seldom graced in 1976. Many years later recordings, allegedly by Hatto and allegedly recorded ‘at home’ on her Steinway piano, began to emerge on her husband’s own Concert Artists label – although it was never convincingly explained how Hatto had managed to fit entire symphony orchestras into her lounge. By the time of her death last year no fewer than 104 ‘Hatto’ discs had been released, garnering rave reviews and transforming the barely known ivory tinkler into a cult heroine. There was just one problem: the recordings weren’t hers.
Twenty years before her ‘retirement’ Hatto had married W. Barrington Coupe – a record ‘mogul’ who specialised in setting up labels with names like Lyrique, Delta and Triumph whose distinguishing feature was to issue recordings by orchestras and conductors who didn’t exist. In 1966 Coupe found himself at the Old Bailey facing changes of tax evasion. Sentencing him to 12 months imprisonment the judge declared: “These were blatant and impertinent frauds but such was your conceit that you thought yourself smart enough to get away with it”. No one knows if Ms Hatto was in court to hear this verdict. Four years later came the highlight of Hatto’s pre-’retirement’ career – a recording of Bax’s Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra with the Guildford Philharmonic under the distinguished conductor Vernon Handley. Paid for by Coupe, it appeared on yet another of his dodgy labels, Revolution. Handley remembers: “The Bax recording was very very difficult indeed. One of the hardest recordings of my 179 discs…..she couldn’t really play rhythmically.” According to Coupe, Hatto was already suffering from ovarian cancer and went “straight from the studios to hospital for surgery,” a version of events completely contradicted by the consultant radiologist who eventually did care for Hatto: “She was first treated for ovarian cancer in 1992 and had no previous history of the disease” he recalled, before adding: “She had ‘chips’ on her shoulder. She thought there were ‘flavours of the month’ and that some people’s faces didn’t fit….I used to hear 15 or 20 minutes of this every six weeks.” The radiologist also remembered that “she had incredible strength and stamina and she looked stunning.” This last remark casts grave doubt on the duplicitous couples’ assertion that Hatto had withdrawn from public performance because an unkind critic had suggested it was “impolite to look ill on stage”. (No trace of this ‘review’ has ever been found.) In the end Hatto was literally ‘digitally challenged’ when one of ‘her’ recordings showed up on iTunes as someone else’s – because the timings of the tracks were identical to the recording they had copied.
The fallout from the greatest classical music scam ever perpetrated has been immense. Critics who reviewed her discs stand accused of being gullible. “One of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced” swooned a Hatto obituary in The Guardian. “Hatto must be the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of” gushed Richard Dyer in the Boston Globe. Yet, apart from ‘doing a John Prescott’ with the English language, I don’t see why Dyer – or any other critic who reviewed a Hatto disc in good faith – should be admonished.
There are those who are saying ‘Hattogate’ is a human tragedy: a worthy- if misguided – attempt by a loving husband to provide consolation to his dying wife. Rubbish. Lots of people (my mother included) suffer terminal illness without resorting to pilfering other people’s hard work. Hatto and Coupe were thoroughly dishonest and Coupe should be forced to face the music his wife lacked the talent to make.
