In Hatto's last years more than 100 recordings falsely attributed to her appeared. The repertoire represented on the CDs included the complete
sonatas of
Beethoven,
Mozart and
Prokofiev, concertos by
Rachmaninoff,
Tchaikovsky,
Brahms and
Mendelssohn and most of
Chopin's compositions, along with rarer works such as the complete
Godowsky Studies on Chopin's Études. The recordings were released, along with piano recordings falsely attributed to
Sergio Fiorentino, by the
Concert Artist Recordings label run by Hatto's husband
William Barrington-Coupe, who had a long history in the record industry. The critic
Neville Cardus had been dazzled by her playing, according to a story found in one obituary. sparked by a blind-listening test in December 2002 posted on ThePiano Yahoo! group featuring a recording under Hatto's name of Liszt's
Mephisto Waltz. Specialised record review magazines and websites such as
Gramophone,
MusicWeb and
Classics Today, as well as newspapers such as
The Boston Globe, eventually discovered Hatto, reviewed the recordings (with mostly very favourable notices) and published interviews and appreciations of her career; in one case, she was described as "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of." Those praising the recordings included Tom Deacon, a former record producer for
Philips, who produced that label's
Great Pianists of the 20th Century series and was so fooled he praised and derided the same recording, thinking that one was by Hatto and the other by
Yuki Matsuzawa; a long-time reviewer for
Gramophone; Jed Distler, a reviewer for
Gramophone and
Classics Today; Ateş Orga, a music critic who also wrote some of the liner notes for Concert Artist, as well as an obituary; and
Ivan Davis, a professional pianist. In May 2005 the
musicologist Marc-André Roberge reported on the Yahoo! Godowsky group that, in Hatto's version of the Chopin-Godowsky Studies on the Concert Artist label, a misreading of a chord was identical to one on the
Carlo Grante recording (AIR-CD-9092, released 1993). However this coincidence did not prompt Roberge or others to investigate further at that time and verification of the copying from the Grante disc would only occur in 2007. In early 2006 doubts about various aspects of Hatto's recording output were expressed, both in the rec.music.classical.recordings
Usenet group and, following the publication of a lengthy appreciation of Hatto in the March issue of
Gramophone, by readers of that magazine. In particular, some found it hard to believe that a pianist who had not performed in public for decades and was said to be fighting cancer should produce in her old age a large number of recordings, all apparently of high quality. It also proved difficult to confirm any of the details of the recordings made with orchestra, including even the existence of
René Köhler, the conductor credited. The doubters were vigorously countered, most publicly by critic
Jeremy Nicholas who in the July 2006 issue of
Gramophone, challenged unnamed sceptics to substantiate their accusations by providing evidence that would "stand up in a court of law". Nicholas's challenge was not taken up and in December
Radio New Zealand was able, in all innocence, to re-broadcast its hour-long programme of glowing appreciation of the Concert Artist Hatto CDs. This programme included excerpts from a telephone interview with Hatto herself, conducted on 6 April 2006, in which she said nothing to dispel the presenter's assumption that she was the sole pianist on all the CDs. The favourable reviews and publicity generated substantial sales for the Concert Artist CDs: in 2006, one online retailer did £50,000 worth of business with Barrington-Coupe. Barrington-Coupe himself claimed to have sold 3,051 Hatto CDs in 2005 and 2006, and 5,500 from 2007 up to February 2009, and that he had made a "thumping great loss" on them. ==Death==