News of the Joyce Hatto scandal is spreading like wildfire across the blogosphere and is just beginning to permeate the mainstream media. For those of you who don't yet know the story, here is Gramophone's overview. Classics Today has this take on the story, including pianist/critic Jed Distler's comments. Interestingly, it was via Jed that I first heard of Joyce Hatto when I ran into him at an Upper West Side Starbucks just last November. He raved about this little known English pianist who had recently died, but who had left an astonishing legacy of recordings across a wide spectrum of repertoire. Just three months later, he and many other critics have now learned that these recordings were evidently stolen, copied, plagiarized from other commercial classical recordings, in some cases altered by "stretching" the timings or other means.

There are many aspects to this story, if indeed the fakery is proven. There is the sad, human side to the saga, especially given that the label producing the discs was run by Ms. Hatto's husband, and that Ms. Hatto herself was dying of cancer over the very years these discs were produced. But this story also says something about the nature of the classical music industry. I don't say that to excoriate the critics who raved about the playing on the discs; before this incident, no critic could reasonably have ever been expected to harbor any skepticism about the claimed identity of a given performer on a recording. And the playing on the recordings was evidently top-notch.

Of the bloggers, Soho the Dog has the most perceptive take on the whole affair, striking close to the real story behind the story:

"What's really intriguing is that no one else (to my knowledge, at least) has tried this before. It would seem to me that classical music recording would provide great opportunities for plagiarism. Why? Because the logistics of performance are pretty close to plagiarism already. Even though there's no attempt at deception, and there's full attribution, a pianist playing the Transcendental Etudes is using notes, rhythms, and dynamics set down by Liszt—and, at least textually, nothing else. Any two performances of the same piece are going to be largely the same. Of course, the artistry lies in the slight differences; but what the individual performer brings to the table is a historical anomaly, something that has persisted in music long after the notion of plagiarism erased it from other intellectual pursuits."

Accepting that view (and adding in the fact that there exist today so many recordings of standard repertoire works such as the Liszt), the point is driven home that the classical publicity industry (and its partner, the mainstream music media) has to find another "hook" by which to differentiate a particular recording or performance from the pack. That is because so few people, even regular concertgoers, can actually hear "the slight differences" to which Soho the Dog refers. That hook, then, can be (and often is)physical attractiveness, the visual packaging of the artist. Or it can be a compelling backstory, such as the very real illness from which Ms. Hatto suffered.

There are two lessons that I hope linger on after this mess is eventually cleared up. One is, that the actual artists whose fine recordings made such a splash when packaged as Joyce Hatto's, get a big boost in positive public recognition from the renewed attention paid to their (purloined) work. After all, their recordings were getting rave reviews, just credited to the wrong pianist.

The other lesson is offered by Pliable at On an Overgrown Path. He reminds us that there is a human being at the other end of this story (Ms. Hatto's husband, William Barrington-Coupe) and that whatever misdeeds have taken place, they probably were spurred by very human motivations: "Mr Barrington-Coupe sounded like somebody who needs some help and understanding, irrespective of the facts behind the story. I can offer no information on the source of the disputed recordings. But perhaps we should all remember compact discs are not the most important things in this world."

A few weeks ago, some exciting news came my direction: I was appointed the new Music Director of the Chamber Music Conference and Composers Forum of the East, a summer program in Bennington, Vermont. The Conference's main function is as a summer music institute for adult amateur musicians to study, rehearse, receive coachings in, and perform chamber music. This summer will mark the CMC's sixty-second season (July 22-August 19),  which I think is an astonishing accomplishment. In the interview process, I came to learn a great deal about this remarkable institution and the devotion to it shared by participants, faculty, and Board members alike.

The Conference is blessed also with an excellent faculty, which performs its own chamber music series of six concerts over the four weeks at Bennington. The Composers Forum, headed by Donald Crockett, brings in three composers to write works designed for some of the amateur groups, as well as to have their music performed on the faculty series. The visiting composers have been top-notch, and this season's composers are no exception: Gabriela Frank, Derek Bermel, and Robert Dick.

There is a small army out there of well-trained, accomplished, devoted musicians out there in America who chose other careers to follow but who remain passionate and dedicated in their musical endeavors. This is a constituency that is not often taken into account in the millions of words written these days about the health-or-lack-thereof of the classical music business. I am very excited about joining the CMC family, working with the participants this summer, collaborating with the other faculty members in rehearsals and concerts, and being a part of both of those groups' efforts in working to secure the future of this very important enterprise for, one hopes, at least another sixty-something years to come.

Passageway connecting Concourse A with the B&C gates, McNamara Terminal, Detroit Metro Airport...Sunday, February 11 at 5:53 PM.

The same location at 5:54 PM.

I love the exotic, the undiscovered, the unheralded musical gem as much as the next guy...no, make that more than the next guy. But, then again, sometimes it's nice to have a healthy dose of The Great Undisputed Classics, and in the next week or so ahead, audiences in this area will have an opportunity to sate themselves on live performances of these. And by that I mean, yes, Beethoven and Brahms (and early Schoenberg thrown in for good measure).  I know in this day and age of non-elitism, we're not supposed to talk about Great Masterpieces or to say things like "To be a well-rounded human being and to have a deep understanding of some of the pinnacles of Western culture, you need to know these works." But, you know what? If you aren't so familiar with classical music, and you'd like not to waste time, but to go "right to the top" and get to hear some of the greatest music ever written, this is the week for you. Take a deep breath, 'cause some of these pieces are rather lengthy. But if you make friends with these works, they'll reward you for a lifetime.

The feast begins this Thursday, Feb. 8 at 7:00 PM at the Columbia Museum of Art, with another installment of the Charles Wadsworth Chamber Music Series. One of the most deeply respected American string quartets, the Brentano Quartet, will be appearing along with clarinetist Todd Palmer. Palmer and the Brentanos will combine for Johannes Brahms' autumnal Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. No composer made a greater contribution to the genre of chamber music than Brahms, and this work distills a lifetime of experience, craft, and emotion.

Friday the 9th or Saturday the 10th I recommend driving 95 miles up I-77 to Charlotte's Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. Those evenings the Charlotte Symphony performs Beethoven's Symphony No. 6, the "Pastoral," along with Arnold Schoenberg's early Romantic and passionate masterpiece, "Verklaerte Nacht" ("Transfigured Night."). The Schoenberg, originally a string sextet, is scored in this version for string orchestra, and this will be a golden opportunity to hear just how much the strings in Charlotte have themselves been transformed (transfigured?) in recent years.  This kind of Germanic repertoire is right up the alley of Music Director Christof Perick. It's been announced that he will depart in a year or so at the end of his current contract, so if you have not heard the orchestra under his direction, this would be a good concert in which to do so.

Better yet, make it a weekend in Charlotte and get yourself back to the Blumenthal on Sunday afternoon, February 11. That afternoon at 3, the Carolinas Concert Association presents Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk in recital. To be sure, the concert will wrap up with some of the lighter fare off recent Bell recordings, but the bulk of the recital is taken up with meaty violin sonatas, by Schumann and Beethoven. In fact, Bell and Denk are playing my personal favorite, the 10th and final violin sonata of Beethoven. Its subtleties may be lost in the large Belk Theater space, but I hope not.

Bringing it back home to Columbia, the USC Symphony Orchestra plays the Koger Center Tuesday evening, February 13 in a program of...you guessed it...Beethoven and Brahms. Rachel Barton Pine appears as soloist in the Brahms' Violin Concerto, and the orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. You don't get any more "Great Masterpiece" than that.

After you've had your fill of classics of the musical canon, there's always the written and spoken word: the Royal Shakespeare Company is halfway through their month-long residency at Davidson College. Read all about it here.

[update 2/7: I should add an alert for another concert...not necessarily one of famous warhorses like those mentioned above, but nevertheless a very significant event for the South Carolina music community...USC's bassoon phenom Peter Kolkay makes his faculty recital debut at the School of Music this Sunday, Feb. 11 at 3 PM. More about Kolkay in this earlier post. ]

I don't have a digital camera yet, but I've been having a lot of fun and getting some surprisingly interesting photos just with my new cellphone. It's icy in the Carolinas today, so these images taken just last Tuesday morning seem quite unreal. In the last post I neglected to point out that one of St. Bart's primary virtues is that it is French, and as such has a proper respect for fine dining, wine, and taking the time to enjoy those properly. Here, then, is what I had for breakfast every morning, at La Petite Columbe bakery in Columbier:

No butter or jam needed on those flaky croissants. Note, too, the deep blackness of the coffee and accompanying two, that's two, packets of sugar. Imagine, then, sitting at a table and enjoying this start to your day...you turn your head to the right and this is what you are looking at out the window:

Something about the phone camera lens gives this some kind of Cezanne-like quality, don't you think? Guest artists at the St. Bart's Music Festival are housed either in hotels or in private homes. Lynn and I were guests of Donna Rossel, who runs the Donna Del Sol jewelry store on the island. She was very gracious to have us for an entire week. Her home is gorgeous, especially the view from her infinity pool, which you can see here in the foreground. A bit more dramatic than the view of sandy dirt (trying to pass for a lawn) and a parking lot that we have from our little ramshackle South Carolina bungalow, I'd say: