her husband did it to her. she did not have the energy (or the lack of integrity, probably). but, hey - what if the confession was forced from william barrington-coupe. after all - he's in his 80's. what if someone went to his house and forced him to write the letter.
Your statements here, if taken literally, are indicative of your having considerable first-hand knowledge of the case and, if you really did have that knowledge (which I'm certain you don't), I'm quite sure that you'd be keeping it to yourself.
As far as is known, WB-C is aged 76, i.e. a couple of years younger than Joyce Hatto appears to have been; we do not yet have evidence of WB-C's date of birth (and I believe that his surname may at some point have been assumed), but his and JH's birth, marriage and death certificates are being sought and, so far, it seems that the two did indeed marry in 1956, although her surname on the marriage certificate was shown (correctly or otherwise) as "Hatts", not "Hatto". We do not know for certain when she died or of what, but until someone can confirm otherwise, her date of death is being accepted as late last June.
The notion that the "confession" - insofar as it is such (see below) - may have been forced from WB-C is highly unlikely; such "confession" as he has so far made is in a private communication with Robert von Bahr, owner of the Swedish label BIS (one of the record companies affected by the Hatto business), albeit with no strictures upon Mr von Bahr for publicising any or all of it, so had Mr von Bahr decided to keep it to himself, we would have heard no "confession" at all, unless W-BC had decided to issue a public one separately (which he has not done to date). Such a "confession" as has been made could therefore only have been "forced" from him by Mr von Bahr himself or one of his company's staff and, since Mr von Bahr had already gone public a week before he received it to state that BIS would be taking no legal action against WB-C, this almost certainly did not happen.
As it is, the "confession" itself has many holes in it, not least the absence of admission as to how many of the 119 CDs are fakes, the lack of information as to which labels and artists have had their work stolen and the fatuous nonsense about having done this for his wife, a suggestion made for no reason other than in a pathetic and failed attempt to garner the sympathy vote and made all the more ridiculously untenable by his parallel implications that his wife knew nothing about what was going on in her name. How could he have done this for his wife - however misguided it would have been to have done so in any case - if his wife really knew nothing about it? Furthermore, if that was really his motive, why did he carry on with the exercise after his wife's death?
You are not the only person to suggest that Joyce Hatto's husband did this "to" her rather than "for" her - and this is certainly how it looks from here right now. We do not yet know, however, the extent of his or anyone else's implication in what has been discovered to date. All that seems likely is that every one of those 119 CDs is a fake and that the CDs weren't faked by accident. It also seems unlikely that WB-C did all this entirely unaided, even though it seems very likely that he was in charge of the operation.
Whether or not and to what extent JH may have been personally implicated in it, either by means of deliberate participation or even by passive awareness and tacit sanction of what was being done in her name, has also yet to be determined with accuracy. Interviews with JH were not conducted face to face and so these, too, could have been faked, as may the correspondence from JH to various people and JH in recent years; indeed, since the CDs themselves are fakes, the interviews and correspjdence would almost certainly have had to be likewise, otherwise the scam might have risked being uncovered sooner. If it is eventually discovered that JH was indeed fully implicated, it will be necessary to determine what her motive was, as well as what WB-C's was; at present, neither motive is clear.
well- it's a continual drama. as long as nobody ends up dead.
At the moment, I can think of only one person who may end up dead as a consequence of the continuing investigations and I do not think that I need either to name that person or suggest that his death may come about by any other hand than his own...
what good pianist would do this anyways? i don't want to sound like anybody else. i'm sure joyce hatto was content with her already existing recordings.
I think it highly unlikely that Joyce Hatto actually did this herself; it was almost certainly done by others, with or without her knowledge or sanction. We have no idea what she may have thought of her earlier recordings. Most of the biographical material about her is either false or unproveable. We do not yet know enough about the cancer story, either. It would be most unusual for anyone suffering from ovarian cancer in the latter 1960s (she was allegedly diagnosed with this disease in 1970) to survive until 2006 at all, let alone make 119 CDs during that time, as WB-C alleged until very recently that she did; so, now that we (a) know that the CDs are fakes, (b) suspect that the interviews are fakes, (c) believe that at least some of the correspondence allegedly by and from JH may also have been wholly or partly faked and (d) know that a substantial quantity of biographical information simply won't stand up to scrutiny, why would we be expected to swallow whole the idea that she lived with and suffered from ovarian cancer for almost four decades? Sorry, but this may in the end turn out to be nothing more than part of the sob-story stuff...
*never trust a man.
One of these is writing this to you now; it's entirely up to you whether and to what extent you trust any or all of it...
Best,
Alistair
Topic: pianisimmo vs pianistimo