Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we’ve got a story that will blow your mind. It’s about one of the wildest scandals to ever hit the classical music world. It’s got everything—deception, stolen recordings, and a secret that fooled everyone for years. We’re talking about the unbelievable case of Joyce Hatto. Let’s dive in!
Joyce Hatto was a British pianist who had a pretty standard career early on.
Later in life, she stopped performing because of illness—or so we thought. Then, in the early 2000s, she suddenly started releasing an insane number of recordings. And not just any recordings—these were brilliant performances, covering a wide range of the most difficult piano repertoire. Critics were stunned. People couldn’t believe how amazing these recordings were, coming from a pianist who had been out of the game for so long! But here’s where it gets crazy.
The recordings? They weren’t hers!
Her husband, William Barrington-Coupe, was the mastermind behind it all. He took recordings from some of the world’s top pianists, made slight tweaks to them, and passed them off as Joyce’s own work. It’s hard to believe, but some truly incredible artists got caught up in this. Take Minoru Nojima, for example—his breathtaking performance of Liszt’s Transcendental Études was passed off as Hatto’s! I actually went to school with him. Minoru was one of Constance Keene’s star pupils at the Manhattan School of Music, and he had won the Van Cliburn Competition. We were in masterclasses together, and let me tell you—he’s an unbelievable pianist.
But it didn’t stop there. László Simon’s recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 was stolen, and even Yefim Bronfman’s epic rendition of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 was used. These are top-tier pianists, and their work was being passed off as someone else’s—right under everyone’s noses’
So how did this all get exposed?
It wasn’t until 2007 that someone noticed something was off. A sharp-eared reviewer thought one of Hatto’s recordings sounded awfully familiar. The deception was discovered when playing one of Joyce Hatto’s CDs in iTunes. It came up as belonging to a completely different pianist. So, they used audio fingerprinting technology and it revealed that many of the recordings released under Hatto’s name were actually taken from other pianists, with slight modifications to disguise them. This discovery unraveled one of the biggest frauds in classical music history. Can you believe that? For years, people were raving about these recordings, thinking they were hearing a miraculous comeback from Hatto. But instead, it was a cut-and-paste job by her husband, who had taken bits from other pianists’ recordings, made a few sneaky edits to disguise them, and released them as Joyce’s.
People were genuinely heartbroken when they found out.
All those glowing reviews, all the admiration—it was built on a lie. But what’s really sad is that it wasn’t just about fooling critics. It was also about tarnishing the incredible work of pianists like Nojima, Simon, Bronfman, and others, who poured their hearts into these performances only to have them hijacked. So, what do we take away from this? I think it’s a reminder that music is all about trust—between the artist and the audience. And when that trust is broken, it’s tough to repair. But the real stars here are the pianists whose work was stolen. Their performances are still just as breathtaking as ever.
What do you think of this wild story? Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.