A classic case of wank from the New Yorker
This is a few days months old and I don't know if this has been posted on one of the various flavors of Fandom_*, but I can't find it so, I'm taking a chance. See update below.

Since this is not real time wankery, it's here in the Lounge for your leisurely reading enjoyment. Tell me if you've heard this one before, okay?

Letters from England: Fantasia for Piano is a teal deer article that appeared in The New Yorker on September 17th. It spans decades, features sockpuppets, classical music snobs, British snark, Plagiarism, Snacky's Law, Soviet death camps, Nazis, WWII, apologies that aren't really apologies (*cough*), and accusations of fake cancer.

Seriously, who could ask for more? Well, yeah, it's kind of long, but with that sort of epic-ness it's to be expected.




So Hatto's illness, ovarian cancer, provided an explanation of sorts for where she had been all those years and burnished the myth of her remarkable renaissance. On the other hand, its sentimental gloss encouraged a mild backlash, in Yahoo and Usenet postings, from pianophiles who were vaguely suspicious because no major critics had written about her.

...

Then, on January 22nd of this year, a participant in the newsgroup who identified himself as Seth Horus—a pseudonym that referred to ancient Egyptian mythology—posted this: “After hearing so much about Joyce Hatto, I started purchasing some of her recordings. While nothing I have heard is bad (in fact, I am glad I bought these CDs), I have noticed something eerie: that the pianist playing the Mozart sonatas cannot be the pianist playing Prokofiev or the pianist playing Albéniz. I have the distinct feeling of being the victim of some sort of hoax. Does anyone else share these feelings? What is actually known about the artist and the circumstances? I looked on the Web and all I can find is some sort of official story, nothing independent.”

Much of the ensuing discussion was the highbrow equivalent of trash talk, a volleying of erudite insults between Hatto’s most ardent boosters and Lemken and various agnostics. The vituperation lasted for days, and the eavesdroppers included not only the usual hobbyists (as well as, presumably, Barrington-Coupe) but also a group of scholars at the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), at the University of London.



A terrific amount of labor went into the deception. Case in point: René Köhler. Barry had first deployed the Köhler pseudonym in the fifties, but until Peter Lemken raised questions a layered biography didn’t become necessary. In March, 2006, responding to an e-mail from Lemken, who stated that he was preparing an article about Hatto and had questions about Köhler (place and date of birth and death, location of gravesite, etc.), Barry invited Lemken to Cambridge to meet “Miss Hatto,” who “would be happy . . . to talk over with you any aspect of her playing, teaching or recording work.” Online, Lemken had speculated that “St. Mark’s Church, Croydon”—identified on Concert Artist CD packages as a venue for Hatto’s recording sessions with Köhler's orchestra but strangely missing from maps—was yet another fiction.

...

After Lemken neglected to call this bluff—he didn’t feel like travelling to England—Barry reiterated the invitation two months later, having meanwhile added some filigree to the Köhler saga: he was born in the Weimar region, travelled on a Swiss passport, and had a grandnephew, “now safely settled in Israel,” who was “a musician and budding conductor.” Then this inspired bit about the grandnephew: “We are trying to make arrangements to bring him to London when he has finished his National Service in the Israeli Army. We have offered recordings with Joyce Hatto, if she is still able to undertake such a commitment, and have offered to finance a career launch at the Royal Festival Hall with as many members of the original National Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra as can be reassembled.”


Look out for the Barry's Heidi8-Style apology near the end. It's a endearingly delusional.

Update: This was originally posted to fandom_lounge on February 17th. I didn't go back far enough. *hangs head* Thank you to jetamors for finding it. It's still an interesting article and sort of wraps up the whole thing up with updates and an interview.