Home Music Lane

It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes.

Feeling...queasy

198.133.139.5

I am not sensing much general alarm from consumers concerning this story, but I was very nearly a victim of this fraud.

After the Gramophone rave in January, I put Ms. Hatto's recording of the 12 Etudes by Liszt first on my list of those to buy. The story (concerning the origin of these recordings) broke just a day or two before I was set to purchase. The story leaves me with a lot of questions.

How many (classical) recordings are fakes? How many recordings in my own collection are fakes? How can consumers protect themselves from this type of fraud? Which labels can be trusted?

As to the Hatto scandal, I remember that the critic (who wrote the original Gramophone article praising Hatto's recording of Liszt' "Etudes") wondered how a terminally ill women (who apparently was so ill that she could no longer perform in public during the time these recordings were produced) could have performed to such a high standard in so much repertoire over so short a time; a time when said artist was never seen in public and presumably undergoing aggressive therapy for cancer. These misgivings did not alarm the critic unduly though (or cause him to begin fact checking) and he went on to rave over Ms. Hatto's catalog. Needless to say, it should not have taken i-tunes to break this case.



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