Joyce Hatto News:

It seems the Joyce Hatto Hoax just keeps growing. It looks like most of what we were told about her is baloney. I bet all 119 CDs attributed to her and sold through Concert Artists Recordings will turn out to be fraud. I own her Chopin Etudes, and the tracks I have compared sound identical to  Matsuzawa on Novalis. Unfortunately, reviewers and journalists seem to have based all their knowledge of Hatto on information fed to them by Hatto's husband, without checking any sources - her relationships with the great pianists of the past, her performances with Victor de Sabata, Sir Thomas Beecham, Paul Kletzki and Jean Martinon, her concerts of all 9 Beethoven/Liszt Symphonies. Even the conductor on all her concerto CDs seems to be made up - René Köhler. Serious doubt has been raised about all aspects of her biography and art. Regarding all these legendary performances, Jeremy Nicholas in 2006 stated "She kept no reviews or scrapbooks".  In fact, no one seems to have heard her play in public or in private since the 1970's. No one has come forward who assisted or witnessed any of these hundreds of recording sessions, many of which included full orchestra. Hatto even refused to play the piano for friends during the last 30 years.

So far, very little reliable information about Hatto the person, or the pianist can be attributed to her, and I think we should regard all of it with great suspicion. All we seem to know is that a Joyce Hatto had a very modest career in London in the 1960's, and stopped performing in the 1970's. Then, between 2003 and 2006, 119 CDs covering most of the piano repertoire were released by Concert Artists Records and attributed to her - most of these widely acclaimed as among the greatest recordings ever of that music.

Sadly, there are victims in this hoax. There are the many, little-known pianists whose recordings, modest royalties, and bits of publicity were stolen as classical media outlets trumpeted and promoted Hatto's discs, and consumers bought them, instead of the real versions (the Hatto CDs were being sold on several major websites, such as Crotchet). Many record reviewers are also being heavily criticized. I can't blame them too heavily them for being duped - we all were. However, it is strange that they never probed a bit more. Didn't the London critics wonder about all these brilliant concerto recordings with orchestra supposedly being made in their backyard, conducted by the fictitious René Köhler? This would be big news at a time when all the major record labels are drastically reducing the number of full orchestra recordings they make.

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