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"The Great Piano Scam" BBC doc on a recording plagiarism scheme


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Interesting that however disguised, the results were considered masterfully played and finest quality renderings - almost as if the perpetrators simply wanted to release their vision of the repertoire. Shame on the fraud but good music is good music. Maybe now they can release a catalog crediting the original players as well as the forgers.

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Quick summary: pianist who hasn't played since a sort of nervous breakdown in 1975 releases CDs of an incredibly wide and challenging repertoire to great critical acclaim, now in her 80's and dying of cancer. Her husband is the engineer/producer/publicist.

 

Turns out that they're existing recordings, that have been engineered to help hide the source, by changing EQ, FX, and timing. (The husband had a reputation as an excellent engineer, working with greats such as Joe Meek.)

 

Cover blown when someone, listening to the recording on a smartphone, looks down and sees another artist's name in the digital media. (Gee, how did a smart engineer let that sneak by? Oops!) Further analysis shows that all the recordings are the works of others.

 

http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/joyce-hatto-the-great-piano-swindle

 

Thanks for sharing; I hadn't heard of this!

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I had not heard of the scam, but I have certainly heard of the "pianist" -- back in the day when she was actually playing (don't know about her recordings back then... Gotta be suspect now, though) and I'm pretty sure I have her in my favourites library on my stream service... or maybe a previous one. I wasn't aware of the fake back story though... She was just a familiar name 'doing' some piece I was interested in.

 

Anyhow, pretty amazing.

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The husband/producer/engineer/publicist had been convicted of fraud back in the 70's. So yeah, those old recordings might be suspect, too. But you can still enjoy listening!

 

It's also interesting that this fraud didn't make any significant money for the guy (or the couple, while she was still alive) at least, according to the video in the OP. So, clearly he's not doing it to get rich. And he still won't admit it, though he was "forced to apologize." Tres bizarre.

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