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BBC to screen Joyce Hatto biopic penned by Victoria Wood
British pianist had dozens of recordings by other artists passed off as her own by husband William Barrington-Coupe
Jason Deans
The Guardian, Monday 20 February 2012
BBC1 is to broadcast a Victoria Wood-scripted biopic of reclusive British pianist Joyce Hatto, whose husband was responsible for a notorious musical fraud, passing off dozens of recordings by other artists as his wife's work.
Loving Miss Hatto will star Francesca Annis as the late Hatto and Alfred Molina as her husband, William Barrington-Coupe.
"Loving Miss Hatto is a screenplay inspired by the true story of classical pianist Joyce Hatto and her husband Barrie," said Wood, whose TV writing credits include Morecambe and Wise biopic Eric & Ernie, Housewife, 49 and Dinnerladies.
"It begins with their meeting in the grey shabby London of the early 50s and ends in the 21st century in a cul-de-sac in Royston, Hertfordshire. This is a story of two young people with high hopes who, like most of us, get bashed in the face by life. It is, above all, a love story."
Hatto, a pianist and piano teacher, died in 2006, aged 77. She was a concert pianist from the 50s, but her playing received mixed notices and retired from public performances in 1976.
However, from the early 2000s, recordings of work by composers including Beethoven, Mozart and Prokofiev attributed to Hatto and released through a record label run by her husband received rave reviews.
The reclusive pianist appeared to enjoy a remarkable creative renaissance in the years immediately before her death.
A glowing 2005 profile in the Boston Globe described her as "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of". The Guardian's obituary the following year said she was the "one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced".
But doubts had surfaced about how a pianist who had not performed in public for 30-odd years and was said to be fighting cancer could produce such a vast number of high-quality recordings.
Then, from February 2007 Gramophone magazine ran a series of articles claiming CDs supposedly of Hatto's work contained recordings made by other artists. It has been estimated that more than 100 recordings were falsely attributed to her.
Barrington-Coupe admitted the fraud in a letter to the head of a record label that had originally released some of the plagiarised recordings. He claimed his wife was unaware of the fraud, that he acted out of love and made little money from the deception.
In September 2007 he told Intelligent Life magazine that on behalf of his late wife he intended to get back at the music industry and critics who had shunned them both.
Loving Miss Hatto will be filmed in Ireland and is being made by Left Bank Pictures. The company is the UK independent producer behind the BBC's Wallander adaptation and its upcoming Nelson Mandela drama, in association with The Tudors producer Octagon Films.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/fe ... tto-biopic
