iTunes, scourge of music critics

It looks like iTunes has noticed what a generation of music critics did not: that Joyce Hatto, supposedly a retiring genius of the piano who eschewed public performance in favour of recording because of her cancer, was actually quite probably a fake, and "her" recordings were in fact copies of other pianists manipulated by her recording engineer husband.

The Guardian reports:

The evidence has come not from a human source, but from the objective judgment of an iTunes programme that compares recordings with an online database. The revelation came about by accident when a Gramophone critic loaded a Hatto recording of Liszt into his computer, only to have the computer identify the recording as not by Hatto at all. Instead, Gramophone reports, the computer listed the recording as the work of the pianist Laszlo Simon on BIS Records.

The critic was confused. So he tried another disc, this time a recording of a Hatto recital of Rachmaninov. Once again his computer's display listed the recording by a different pianist, Yefim Bronfman on Sony.

With the internet rumours echoing in his ears the critic sent the recordings of the Simon and Hatto recitals of Liszt for analysis by audio expert Andrew Rose of Pristine Records. The soundwaves of the two recordings were identical.

"Without a shadow of a doubt," Mr Rose told Gramophone, "10 of the tracks on the Liszt disc are identical to those on the Simon." Under further analysis, it appeared the Hatto recordings had also been heavily manipulated.

Gramophone reports how Rose produced a section on his website that allows listeners to compare the pattern of soundwaves of Hatto's recordings with other pianists. When Rose went on to compare the Rachmaninov recital with the Bronfman recording, they also matched.

Further analysis of her recordings is needed, but the romantic story of a forgotten genius may not be all it seems.

It's amazing how talented we human beings are at making the facts fit the picture we want to make. In this case, top music critics managed to hear a consistent individual personality behind recordings which were in fact seemingly by diverse performers. Critics even apparently credited that the Hattos had squeezed a symphony orchestra into their garden studio!

Algorithms 1, Humans 0.