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{{Short description|Welsh record producer (1931–2014)}}
{{Use British English|date=February 2012}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2020}}
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==Biography==
Barrington-Coupe was born in [[Llanelli]] but grew up in [[Lewisham]] in London,<ref>{{Cite web|title=William H B Coupe|url=https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/17400900/person/1061889270/facts?_phsrc=yuU5244&_phstart=successSource|access-date=2021-03-23|website=www.ancestry.co.uk}}</ref> where he worked as a classical musicians' agent in the early 1950s. In January 1952 he applied for a
=== Concert Artists ===
Barrington-Coupe set up the record label ''Concert Artists'' in 1954 and released a few recordings of his own artists but mainly other recordings obtained under [[Music licensing|
|work=Billboard
|title=Pre-Recorded IPR Hi-Fi Tape at LP Prices
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}}
</ref> Concert Artists was compulsorily [[Liquidation|wound up]] 1956.<ref name=":0" />
=== Saga Records and Triumph Records ===
Saga Films had been registered in 1955 by the British pianist Leonard Cassini but his interests soon turned to records. In 1958 he found financial backing from an entrepreneur, Wilfred Alonzo Banks (1913-83), who valued music primarily as a means to turn a fast buck. He did not pretend to know how to run a record label and evidently did not trust Cassini’s business acumen either, so by March 1958 he was employing Barrington-Coupe as his executive producer. At this time, orchestral recording in Britain was subject to strict union rules that made it prohibitively expensive for independent labels. In Hamburg, they found a custom recording service who provided session players drawn from local ensembles. Saga sent the pianists [[Sergio Fiorentino]] and Barrington-Coupe's newly-wed wife, [[Joyce Hatto]], and sent its own engineer, [[James Lock (sound engineer)|James Lock]], to the sessions. They also recorded in Copenhagen with pianist [[Eileen Joyce]] (1908-91) and the violinist [[Alan Loveday]]. Cassini persuaded [[Lazar Berman]] to make an LP while on a concert visit to London. Some Russian tapes were procured, so the public was offered quite a substantial selection of LPs, EPs and tapes when the first catalogue was published in September 1958. in 1959 a licensing deal for distribution in the USA was struck with [[Roulette Records|Roulette]], which had no classical titles of its own and created the Forum label specially for its acquisitions. (Roulette marketed the recording of Grieg’s Concerto made by Eileen Joyce as the work of Joyce Hatto.) By 1959 Barrington-Coupe was advertising recordings that had not yet been made including a Beethoven symphony cycle.
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After he was released from prison, Barrington-Coupe was reunited with Hatto. While she began to earn a modest reputation for her recitals of [[Liszt]] and [[Chopin]], Barrington-Coupe maintained a lower profile. In the 1970s, the couple disappeared from the public eye, becoming virtual recluses in their detached modern home in [[Royston, Hertfordshire]].<ref name="Royston Crow 1 March 2012">{{cite news | title= Exclusive: Husband of pianist in recording scandal speaks to The Crow |url= http://www.royston-crow.co.uk/news/exclusive_husband_of_pianist_in_recording_scandal_speaks_to_the_crow_1_1224693| last= Foskett| first= Ewan |date= 1 March 2012| newspaper= [[Royston Crow (newspaper)|The Royston Crow]] | accessdate= 16 May 2016 }}</ref>
It was not until 2002 that they were heard of again. During the previous 13 years they had apparently recorded another 103 CDs of Hatto's playing, which Barrington-Coupe began issuing on his Concert Artist label. In 2007, these CDs were found to be fraudulent copies of recordings of other artists issued by other labels.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.classicstoday.com/features/021807-joycehatto.asp|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090717014944/http://www.classicstoday.com/features/021807-joycehatto.asp|url-status=dead|title=Will The Real Joyce Hatto Please Stand Up!<!-- Bot generated title -->|archive-date=17 July 2009|access-date=26 July 2020}}</ref> Barrington-Coupe initially denied any wrongdoing but subsequently admitted the fraud in a letter to Robert von Bahr, the head of the Swedish BIS record label that had originally issued some of the recordings plagiarised by Concert Artist. Bahr immediately shared the contents of the letter with ''[[Gramophone (magazine)|Gramophone]]'' magazine, telling journalist Jessica Duchen afterwards that he "had given a lot of thought" to suing Barrington-Coupe for damages, but was inclined not to do so, on the assumption that the hoax recordings were "a desperate attempt to build a shrine to a dying wife".<ref name="duchen">{{cite news |first=Jessica |last=Duchen |author-link=Jessica Duchen |title=Joyce Hatto: Notes on a scandal |url=http://www.jessicaduchen.co.uk/pdfs/indi-2007/joyce-hatto.pdf |work=The Independent, 26 February 2007 |accessdate=2012-06-10 }}</ref>
==Death==
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[[Category:People from Royston, Hertfordshire]]
[[Category:People from Lewisham]]
[[Category:British record producers]]
[[Category:British fraudsters]]
[[Category:People from Llanelli]]
[[Category:20th-century British criminals]]
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