Scandal in classical music?

Anybody who thinks classical music or the world of classical music is dull is sadly mistaken. The term diva, for a temperamental and sometimes unreasonable but gifted artist, after all, originated in the world of opera, and classical musicians can be as petty and shortsighted as anybody.

Right now there's a juicy potential scandal unfolding. About a year ago critics at Gramophone (the Rolling Stone of the classical world but with a longer pedigree?) started touting the recordings of one Joyce Hatto, a little-known English pianist who was battling cancer. Her recordings were released by her husband on the minuscule label Concert Artist, and critics were blown away by her proficiency with Liszt, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Dukas, and more -- a wide range. She died in June 2006, by which time she had achieved a certain notoriety.

Then a few days ago, as Gramophone reports, another critic listened to a Hatto recording of the Liszt Transcendental Etudes on his computer. As computers will, it identified the recording -- as the Transcendental Etudes, all right, but as a recording by the pianist Laszlo Simon. He got a copy of the Simon recording and listened to them side-by-side and they sounded exactly the same.

So he put in a Hatto recording of two Rachmaninov piano concertos, and the computer ID'd it as a recording by Yefim Bronfman. So Gramophone sent the discs to an audio expert who put instruments to the recordings and they looked identical.

Hatto's husband was contacted and he was simply mystified.

Could be a juicy scandal.