More Hatto matters
ckho...@ckhowell.com
Tateno on Canyon Classics (also Finlandia FACD 411) was suggested
early on but Wikipedia still states that side-by-side comparisons for
all 24 pieces have not yet been made. I have now done this and can
confirm it as a straight rip-off with no time-manipulation and the
usual messing with the sound picture. Amusingly the false beginning of
Bruyères, with the first two notes repeated, heard on a CA CD mainly
dedicated to Franck but not on the final copy of the Preludes, turns
out not to have been an editing mistake by WBC. It was there on the
original Tateno.
2) Brahms shorter pieces CACD 9030-2, 9031-2
Quite a while ago Mark Ettinger announced that op.118 nos. 1, 2, 3, &
6 were from a CD by Deszo Ranki issued by Harmonia Mundi (QUI 903083).
I have now been able to hear this disc. Mark Ettinger was commenting
on the version of op.118 coupled with the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto
now known to be by Ashkenazy (CACD 8001-2). I have confirmed this.
However, on "Brahms Complete Works Vol. 5" nos. 1 & 2 have been
replaced while 3 & 6 are retained.
Altogether 10 out of 13 tracks were ripped off from the Ranki disc, so
we now have identifications for:
Scherzo op.4
Ballades op.10 nos. 1, 2, 3
Op. 118 as described above
Op.119 nos. 3 & 4.
The rip-offs are straight without time manipulation but 3 seconds have
been cut off the final chord of op.118/6. The original sound was
rather brittle and it has been mellowed quite drastically.
The Ranki also has performances of op.116 nos. 3 and 6 which are not
matches and a "Hatto" version of op.10 no. 4 was not issued as far as
I know.
3) The Indjic Mazurkas again.
I have just had the opportunity to examine a cassette version of the
Chopin Mazurkas issued in 1993. I really thought this might be old
enough to be genuine. But I've listened to the first two and they were
Indjic even then. The order of the pieces has been changed in exactly
the same way as on the later CD, too. Whatever emerges from my
listening to the remaining pieces, the fact that 2 are by Indjic is
sufficient to prove that the scam goes back at least 14 years. So we
can drop any pietistic interpretations about the good, loving husband
lightening the final days of his dying wife.
Christopher Howell
Rugby
Webster Dover lp theory, even though lp, especially if scam 14 years
old.
aleksios
> [...] sufficient to prove that the scam goes back at least 14 years.
> So we can drop any pietistic interpretations about the good, loving
> husband lightening the final days of his dying wife.
I'm not sure that anyone ever believed it. However, this proves that,
(1) WBC was not the technical wizard some critics find convenient to
believe he was, and, (2) he has been pulling the wool over the eyes of
the profession for far longer than most people think; which throws a
stark light on the critics' steadfast rejection of self-examination
over this affair. Rather like certain contemporary politicians...
--Alex (the arcadian philistine)
ckho...@ckhowell.com
he has been pulling the wool over the eyes of
> the profession for far longer than most people think; which throws a
> stark light on the critics' steadfast rejection of self-examination
> over this affair.
I doubt if any critics reviewed those early tapes and their
circulation must have been very small. People who got into contact
with WBC, usually for his Fiorentinos or the suspect Cortots, were
offered Hattos too.
Still, a scam's a scam. The first cassette seems to have been the
genuine Bax, transferred from LP in 1983. It will take some time to
work out just when plagiary took over.
Christopher Howell
Paul Ilechko
measuring the amount of time wasted in discussing the works fraudulently
attributed to a minor British pianist.
Josep Vilanova
That's true, but at the same time there is something fascinating, in a
purely psychological sense, in that case, if they really were doing
that for 14 years. It makes me thing with that other thread about that
film, Quartet. We have a pianist who, for what appears to be, is
devoid of talent and who resents it. And to compensate that sense of
wounded self esteem creates with the husband an elaborate fantasy in
which she is the secret teacher of most of all great pianists in the
world and an exquisite performer of all music ever written for piano.
And who, with the help of the husband, lives out fully that fantasy,
writes letters, does interviews, complains to her doctor about the
unfairness of her fate, like if she was, perhaps like Schubert, or the
later years Mozart, a genius that the world refuses to recognize...
aleksios
said:
> [...] the works fraudulently attributed to a minor British
> pianist.
Mm, describing Hatto as a "minor British pianist" is rather like
describing Elmyr de Hory as a minor Hungarian painter.
--Alex (the genuine philistine)
Josep Vilanova
> On 2007-06-01 14:02:30 -0400, Paul Ilechko <pilec...@patmedia.net>
> said:
>
> > [...] the works fraudulently attributed to a minor British
> > pianist.
>
> Mm, describing Hatto as a "minor British pianist" is rather like
> describing Elmyr de Hory as a minor Hungarian painter.
>
> --Alex (the genuine philistine)
In some ways, now that I think about it, both cases have some
similarities. Hory's reasons seemed to be more financial, but both of
them created a myth of themselves that was the fantasy that recreated
the type of person they would have liked to be. Hory told everybody
that he came from an old aristocratic family when he was more likely
to be from middle class background, and told long tales about that
imagined past. It's like the psychoanalytical concept of a 'false
self'. Both of them created that false self that, in the case of
Hatto, may had the purpose of protecting her from the frustrations of
not being talented enough and, later on, from the anxieties around her
illness.
j
Paul Ilechko
> On 2007-06-01 14:02:30 -0400, Paul Ilechko <pile...@patmedia.net>
> said:
>
>> [...] the works fraudulently attributed to a minor British
>> pianist.
>
> Mm, describing Hatto as a "minor British pianist" is rather like
> describing Elmyr de Hory as a minor Hungarian painter.
Or Karl Friedrich Hieronymus as a minor German soldier.
John Briggs
I think you're missing a surname there...
--
John Briggs
Paul Ilechko
Obviously.
Philip Peters
Who is Elmyr de Hory?
(Are his paintings really by Rembrandt? ;-)
Philip
>
aleksios
said:
> Or Karl Friedrich Hieronymus as a minor German soldier.
Careful there, you're opening the nostalgia barrel. Buerger's account
of the Muenchhausen stories, illustrated by Dore, were -- together
with Hauff's fairy tales -- my favourite books, more years ago than I
care to remember. I always thought that the good Baron had a bad rep
in English. Just like Hasek's immortal soldier was no fool,
Muenchhausen was no liar -- he was a past master in the fine art of
telling tall tales.
--Alex (the magniloquent philistine)
aleksios
<josepv...@hotmail.com> said:
> [...] both cases have some similarities. [...]
In more ways than one. It is said that an expert in Raoul Dufy once
rejected an unquestionably authentic Dufy as a forgery. He'd grown so
accustomed to de Hory's Dufy forgeries that he couldn't recognise the
real thing any longer -- rather like certain music critics of our
acquaintance. (The Dufy story may be apocryphal, but, se non e vero, e
ben' trovato!)
--Alex (the expert philistine)
John Briggs
>
> Who is Elmyr de Hory?
> (Are his paintings really by Rembrandt? ;-)
You're thinking of Han van Meegeren - but, in fact, none of his paintings
were by Rembrandt :-)
--
John Briggs
Philip Peters
No, one of them was by Vermeer...
P.
ckho...@ckhowell.com
ckhow...@ckhowell.com ha scritto:
More delving into the early days of the scam.
1) I've had access to cassette FED4-TC-098, dated 1994 and coupling
Brahms PiCo 1 with opp.117 & 79. From an MP3 I've been sent of the
first 3 minutes of the finale in the Gutierrez/Previn recording there
seems no doubt that this was already the source in 1994.
2) Op.117 present a curious problem. Only no. 1 corresponds to the
still unidentified performances on the "Hatto" Brahms Vol. 5 CD. The
sound is greatly uglified, presumably to bring it into line with nos.
2 & 3. These have a horrible metallic buzz as well as tape hiss and
sound like modest cassette recordings made at home, which is what I
suspect they are. Possibly real Hatto, then, though surely dating from
well before 1994. The playing is gutsy, sometimes interesting, often
heavy-handed, consistent with the Liszt recordings (Rigoletto
Paraphrase etc) presumed to have been made in the 1970s.
3) I have also heard FED-TC-5014, coupling Chopin PiCo 2 with short,
mostly rare, pieces and dated 1984. Again, I've been sent an MP3 of
the beginning of the finale in the "Hatto" CD version and this time
the performances are not the same. Although the conductor is "René
Köhler", presumably making his recorded "début", the Hamburg Chamber
Orchestra was real and formed the basis of the Hamburg Pro Musica used
regularly by the Paul Lazare outfit. I'm inclined to think this is
really Hatto, probably well before 1984. WBC apparently kept in touch
with Hamburg even after the Lazare setup ended. The performance has
some attractive moments, also wayward ones and a tendency to press
ahead anxiously when the going gets tough, exactly as Handley
described her playing in 1970. "René Köhler" may therefore have begun
life as a "normal" pseudonym, covering a conductor who could not be
named for contractual reasons, then became a useful name for other
purposes.
Christopher Howell