(Seen on Digg.) A British pianist’s masterful renditions of classical piano works have turned out to be fantastic hoaxes. She, and her husband who produced the albums, was passing off entire albums from other artists as her own performances. You can read the story at New Scientist; and the detailed, but entirely accessible, and totally damning, analysis at Pristine Classical.

Apparently, they used existing recordings, and tweaked the speed by a miniscule amount (so the timing could come out different), and adjusted the EQ and stereo balance. Despite all of these precautions, they were still found out through an automatic algorithm when a fan inserted their CD and discovered that iTunes automatically detected the disc as a different (the original) performer’s work!