William Barrington-Coupe: Difference between revisions

'''William HalfordH. Barrington-Coupe'''<ref name="Daily Mail 24-02-07"/><ref name="Certs">[http://groups.google.com/group/rec.music.classical.recordings/browse_thread/thread/437ba1ab6d068bcf/ec7bc345d2b313fe?q=%22william+h+b+coupe%22&lnk=ol&hl=en&oyce Hatto's birth, marriage and death certificates]</ref> (born 1931 in [[Llanelli]], died 19 October 2014 in Royston, England)<ref name="Royston Crow 30 October 2014">{{cite web |url= http://www.familynotices24.co.uk/roy/view/3594085/william-barringtoncoupe-barry |title= William Barrington-Coupe ('Barry') |author= <!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |date= 30 October 2014| newspaper= [[Royston Crow (newspaper) |The Royston Crow]]|publisher= | accessdate= 16 May 2016 }}</ref> was a Welsh record producer and music impresario.

Married in 1956<ref name="Certs" /> to concert pianist [[Joyce Hatto]], he was jailed for a year in 1966 for purchase"blatant taxand evasionimpertinent frauds".<ref name="Daily Mail 24-02-07"/> He attained further notoriety in 2007 when he confessed that a large number of piano CDs that he had sold on his [[Concert Artist Recordings|Concert Artist/Fidelio Recordings]] label were not in fact performed by his wife but were copies, in some cases digitally manipulated, of commercially available recordings by other pianists.<ref name="The New Yorker 17 September 2007">{{cite news |last= Singer |first= Mark |title= Fantasia for Piano|url= http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/09/17/fantasia-for-piano | date= 17 September 2007|work= [[The New Yorker]] |location=New York City| accessdate= 16 May 2016 }}</ref>

In the early 1950s Barrington-Coupe worked in London as a classical musicians' agent. A directory from 1953–1954 showed him with two exclusive artists on his books.<ref>{{cite book |last=Fifield |first=Christopher|title=Ibbs and Tillett: The Rise and Fall of a Musical Empire |year=2005 |publisher=Ashgate Publishing Ltd |isbn=1-84014-290-1|pages=301|url=https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN1840142901&id=qz-s4zdLCNsC&pg=PA301&lpg=PA301&vq=barrington-coupe&sig=YJ-Mc5o1jNj15ilyohmn1AI296k }}</ref> A 1955 article in ''[[Billboard (magazine)|Billboard]]'' magazine refers to Barrington-Coupe, as President of Concert Artists, licensing Mozart recordings by the "London Mozart Ensemble".<ref>{{cite-news

Following the Saga collapse in late 1960, he created the Lyrique record label with Marcel Rodd, who had a record-pressing factory, and began to release records by artists under different pseudonyms, a not uncommon practice of the era.<ref>http://www.scena.org/columns/lebrecht/070221-NL-hatto.html Norman Lebrecht. ''How to make a classical fake''. 21 February 2007</ref> "The repertoire was from the variety of master tapes now in Rodd's tape library," wrote Ted Perry, one of Barrington-Coupe's former colleagues in an unpublished autobiography. "It was also, possibly, from some of Coupe's own tapes since he always seemed to have a lot of recorded material of unknown, not to say dubious, provenance."<ref name="Daily Mail 24-02-07">[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=438296 'Revenge of the fraudster pianist'], ''[[Daily Mail]]'' 24 February 2007</ref>

Recordings of classical works issued on his Delta label were believed to have been copied from radio broadcasts from behind the [[Iron Curtain]], mixed to disguise the sources. ''[[Private Eye]]'' has claimed that on one recording of [[Tchaikovsky]]'s 4th Symphony, he made the mistake of inserting a number of bars backwards.<ref name="Private Eye No 1180"/> A recording issued featuring the Danzig Philharmonic was in stereo, when it was known that that orchestra had ceased to exist a decade or more before stereo recording was common. He also made up artists' names: "Wilhelm Havagesse" was the falsely-named conductor of the "Zurich Municipal Orchestra" in a recording of ''[[Scheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov)|Scheherazade]]'' released on Barrington-Coupe's [[Concert Artist Recordings|Fidelio label]] in 1962 (ATL 4006).<ref name="Private Eye No 1180"/><ref>It should be said that other 'budget' record labels from the 1950s to the present day also frequently use made-up names for their artistes where the master tapes are made by moonlighting musicians, or where all trace of origin has been lost.</ref> Charles Haynes, who worked with Barrington-Coupe at Delta, recounted that "quite often they used to 'monkey around', hence conductors Havagesse and Homer Lott and the soprano Herda Wobbel", lamenting that the practice stopped when "the [[Trades Descriptions Act]] threatened the continuing existence of these fine artists: 'End of the Road for Musician Havagesse' proclaimed the ''[[Daily Telegraph]]'''s headline."<ref>Charles Haynes, ''Pearls Before''. Self-published Tunbridge Wells 1991; see also Marc Shepherd, [http://www.cris.com/~oakapple/gasdisc/miscinst-johnson.htm 'Gilbert & Sullivan for Orchestra, Eric Johnson, conductor a/k/a The Best Loved Melodies of [[Gilbert and Sullivan]], Malcolm Hughes, conductor'] Nov. 2001.</ref>

Barrington-Coupe set up a further label, on 25 February 1960, with Major Wilfred Alonzo Banks's financial backing: [[Triumph Records (UK)|Triumph Records]]. This time his collaborator was [[Joe Meek]], a record producer who became best known for "[[Telstar (song)|Telstar]]", the 1962 hit by [[the Tornados]].<ref>[http://www.joemeekpage.info/triumph_1_E.htm The JOE MEEK Page | Triumph Records, Part 1<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> The two men later fell out and Meek left the company, which subsequently went into liquidation. Meek was followed by [[David Gooch]], who produced a number of extended-play and long-playing records on a new label, [[Dial Records (UK label)|Dial Records]]. This association was terminated when Barrington-Coupe had obvious financial difficulties. Desperate to make ends meet, he began importing radios from Hong Kong, which he sold in London markets and by mail order, but became the subject of legal action when he failed to pay [[purchase tax]].

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]], heBarrington-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. Barrington-Coupe initially denied that there was 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.