Piano plagiarism causes aesthetic dilemma

Denis Dutton, Canterbury University professor and founding editor of Arts & Letters Daily, writes about a “scandal unparalleled in the annals of classical music” for the New York Times. Dutton’s piece explores the implications for instrumental criticism caused by the recently-outed piano plagiarist, Joyce Hatto. Hatto was widely acclaimed for her late-life recordings before it was revealed that she had been passing off the work of upcoming pianists as her own. “I’m personally convinced that there is an authentic, objective maturity that I can hear in the later recordings of Rubinstein,” writes Dutton. “This special quality of his is actually in the music, and is not just subjectively derived from seeing the wrinkles in the old man’s face. But the Joyce Hatto episode shows that our expectations, our knowledge of a back story, can subtly, or perhaps even crudely, affect our aesthetic response.” Dutton’s piece was re-published on leading thinkers’ website, the Edge Foundation.