For those who've not already caught up with this story.

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------ Forwarded Message
From: Craig Sapp <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:29:36 +0100 (CET)
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [MUSIC-IR] Scandal in the classical music world developing

Dear Music-IRers,

You may find interest in following the discovery of a
possible large-scale hoax in classical music.

I have been analyzing the performances of Chopin Mazurkas
(http://mazurka.org.uk) and have been noticing an unusual
occurence: the performances of the same two pianists always
matched whenever I do an analysis for a particular mazurka.
In fact, they matched as well as two different re-releases
of the same original recording.

We were keeping the identity confidential due to strict
libel laws in the UK and slowly building up a case.  One CD
set being a match could possibly be an innocent mistake,
and if the record label lost business due to insinuations
related to our findings... However, the story broke this
past Thursday afternoon on the Gramophone website:
  
http://www.gramophone.co.uk/newsMainTemplate.asp?storyID=2759&newssectionID=
1

Last week, a music critic of Gramophone put a CD of Joyce
Hatto's performance of the Liszt Transcedental Etudes into
his CD-rom drive.  The iTunes program then informed him
that the pieces on the CD were correct, but the performer
was different. He had that other CD and listened to both
and could tell that the sounded very similar to each other.
He then found using iTunes another match with Joyce Hatto
playing Rachmaninov piano concertos, and again he had the
original CD and could not tell a difference between them.
He sent them to Pristine Audio to be analyzed by Andrew
Rose, who confirmed the matches:
   http://www.pristineclassical.com/HattoHoax.html
Andrew subsequently discovered that the Hatto performances
of the Godowsky Chopin Etude Studies were also from a
previously released commercial CD (although recent reports
indicate that some of the tracks on the CD set are by an
additional performer Marc Hamelin).

The day after the initial disclosure on the Gramophone
website, CHARM (http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk) released their
findings which it had been collecting on the similarities
of the Chopin mazurkas, since there was no longer any legal
concerns related to releasing our corroborating findings.
   http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/content/contact/hatto_cover.html
   http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/content/contact/hatto_article.html

It is interesting to note that the Mazurka performances
of Joyce Hatto could not be identified by the CDDB method
used by iTunes to uncover the first two matches found by
the Gramophone critic. The ordering of the mazurkas had
been changed on the CDs, and the mazurkas were allocated
differently on the two discs so that the track counts
did not match. In addition, each track was timestreched
by differing amounts.  In the three mazurkas that I
have examined in detail, the time stretching was -0.7%,
-2.8%, and +1.2%.  The fact that different amounts of
time stretching was applied to the separate tracks leads
to juicy circumstantial conclusions.  It is interesting to
note that Andrew Rose discovered that the Godowsky Studies
had been slowed down by an incredible 15%.

Six of Joyce Hatto's CDs have been identified as copies
of existing commercial recordings (as of Sunday night):
three by Gramophone/Pristine Audio; one by CHARM; one by a
rec.music.classical.recording contributor 12 hours after
the Gramophone news (so his claim to have know earlier is
most likely correct); and 1 additional matching on Sunday
for a source to the Chopin Etude CD set.

Hatto's mostly complete Concert Artists discography and
a list of the currently identified original sources are
available on her entry in Wikipedia:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Hatto

Initial news reports that picked up the story from
Gramophone:
   * International Herald Tribune: "Questions arise over
     recordings by pianist Joyce Hatto,"
     published February 16, 2007
     http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/16/news/hatto.php
   * Times Online: "Piano 'genius' is branded a fake,"
      published February 17, 2007
     
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/arti
cle
1398283.ece
   * The Telegraph: "Pianist's virtuosity is called into
      question," published February 17, 2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/17/npianist17.x
ml
  * New York Times: "A Pianist's Recordings Draw
     Praise, but Were They All Hers?," published February
     17, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/arts/music/17hatt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

More recent analysis has been less sensationalized, and
includes mention of CHARM:
   http://stereophile.com/news/021907hatto (It has a
   factual error about equating correlation to probability
   which I am trying to get fixed)  The actual
   probablities are actually much larger that 999 out of
   1000 that the Hatto and Indjic mazurka performances
   are the same.
Also a well-balanced blog entry cited by the above news
article:
   http://hiperhip.blogspot.com/2007/02/strange-story.html

The "timescapes" with which I first noticed the
similarity between Hatto and Indjic performances are
exactly analogous to keyscapes (which you may have seen
before).  The performance beat durations are compared at
various timescales, and a two-dimentional plot displays
the results.  In keyscapes, the music being examined to
the 24 major and minor keys.  In timescapes, the original
performance is instead compared to an arbitrary number of
other performances of the same composition.

Timescapes were not intended to find exact matches like the
Hatto/Indjic pairings; it is just a side-effect.  Instead,
they were developed to examine non-exact performances.
In other words, to examine the stylistic relationships
between student/teacher, schools of playing, and apparently
in the pictures for mazurka 24/2, what mazurka recording
(of another pianist) does a performer own.

You may enjoy examing the timescapes which I have collected
so far in the mazurka project. They are available on
the webpage:
   http://mazurka.org.uk/ana/pcor
See if you can identify the Hatto/Indjic pairs without
looking at the legends underneath the pictures.  Also of
interest, look at the Rubinstein pictures (we have
three performances of every mazurka played by him during
different points in his career).

-=+Craig

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