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Dunno. Maybe there was so much collective guilt (with reason) about collaboration in France that people were hesitant to take lessons from the scapegoat. The student who originally passed the information I passed on was an Englishman.

(Don't mind me. I'm drunk anyway.)

I think this is pretty good. But I'm not a fan.

Hindsight indeed. Gieseking was also adept at covering his arse.

Wonder what I would have done given the circumstances.

There's nothing "supposed" about his collaboration. He not only played for them, he took an active administrative role in the Vichy regime. But after the war, he claimed to been apolitical in those activities, that he was only interested in keeping the musical life of the country going. Apparently many people in France immediately after the war weren't buying that story, and he ended up having to move to Switzerland because he was not welcome to remain in France. But that animosity faded after a few years.

What was he really thinking during all that? Who knows, but it seems, just from what is known, that it may be overly generous to think that he submitted to the role he played just to stay alive or to avoid imprisonment. AFAIK, he himself never made such a claim after the war, when he could safely do so.

*Sigh*
(Gotta love PianoWorld )

This would be a pretty dull place if we all agreed.

I'm hoping someone can post a few really good YouTube recordings by Cortot to help convince me he was more than a great teacher. So far, there were two posted recordings showing good if not IMO outstanding technique(Chopin Prelude No. 16 and Saint Saens Etude in the Form of a Valse).

Edit: Here's one I like...Chopin Ballade in G minor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9GBjQyvtAM

Other good ones?

His 4th Ballade is my all-time favorite recording of that piece - what incredible singing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA9NYhAbUYg

Here's a wonderful recording of the 11th Rhapsody, also a favorite, which betrays a very solid technique (one has to excuse his little additions)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oea28Mx_KoI

I also dearly love his Liszt Sonata, but that's a different matter.

Hi all, how are you?

I'm not sure if there's any convincing to be done, or if there even should be. Cortot has always been a divisive figure and both sides have a case. I generally find his approach fresh and interesting, and while I'm not crazy about his clunkers, to a large extent they don't really bother me so much. I guess it depends on what your priorities are. I tend to be much more forgiving for someone who emphasizes exploration and spontaneity over technique than for the converse. I like to be surprised. And I'm not of the camp that holds absolute fidelity to the score to be of the utmost importance.

Anyway, here are a couple of renditions I like. The first is an early recording of Chopin's Berceuse, the second is of Chopin's Prelude Op. 45. Apologies in advance for the recording quality of the first.





Enjoy! Or don't. It's all good.

I love his Debussy and Chopin, though I also heard a Ravel D major Concerto which was pretty messy. He sometimes played music that didn't play to his strengths, and good for him. We should all strive to be as good as he was at music we struggle with.

vers la flan:

Thank you for this beautiful recording. When I initially posted to this site, my purpose was, through examples of arpeggiation and asynchronization, to introduce those without prior exposure to commonplace performance practices of the 19th century.

That is why I have continually cited Neal Peres Da Costa's new book, entitled “Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing."

His chapters are entitled:
1) "Early Recordings: Their Value as Evidence"
2) "Playing One Hand after the Other: Dislocation"
3) "Unnotated Arpeggiaton"
4) "Metrical Rubato and Other Forms of Rhythmic Alteration"
5) "Tempo Modification"

Is this what Alfred Cortot did and what we can hear in his recordings? I definitely think so. Was he the only one doing so? I think not.

Remember, his teacher was Emile Descombes, whose teacher and associate was Frederic Chopin. In my world, that is what is called "taking it to the bank."

So, for those who might choose to actually read (not Google) Peres da Costa's book, I will now give you the link to its companion website at Oxford University Press. It contains over fifty recorded examples of this type of playing which are cross-referenced from practically every page of his highly detailed text.

Enjoy.


www.oup.com/us/offtherecord. Username Music3, password Book3234.

The 1933 version of the Chopin Preludes is amazing, certainly one of my favorite performances of a big Chopin work. I don't know whether it's on YouTube. YouTube-surfing might not be the best way to appreciate Cortot. He made a great many recordings, some when his powers were waning, and he recorded several works multiple times.

I remember my undergrad teacher made a very good comparison when talking about recordings and pianists today. He said that people nowadays have such an unrealistic perception of beauty due to photoshopping of almost every magazine cover we see, and the same has happened with the recording industry. We (specifically pianists under the mid 30 age range) are so sensitive to mistakes, because most recordings we hear have them edited out.

I have also heard from another older pianist that while the rise of technical proficiency and greatness in pianists (pianists referring to students in schools as well as concert artists) has increased in the past 50 years, musicality has had a direct decline in proportion to this.

I am just saying both these statements because,
1) Cortot has an excellent sense of musicianship that in my opinion far outweighs any wrong notes.
2) I think the rise of the recording industry (and other things) has placed an emphasis on note perfect performance that was not there during Cortot's time.

An excellent post, very well thought out.

The reason people got on boats and trains and travelled from all over the world to study under this man was his ability to teach people how to make beautiful music.

It is not the recording industry that has killed musicality in classical pianism, it is the music schools.

With their total emphasis on Herculean feats of wonder at the piano, they have produced a cadre of contest winners, most of whom don't have a musical bone in their whole bodies. That is why within a few years after they graduate, you never hear from most of them again.

Alfred Cortot has been universally described as one of the greatest Chopin players of all time because he was!

Cool -- something we agree on.
I'm with you on Cortot and with much of the rest, although "most of whom don't have a musical bone in their whole bodies" is way strong, and way not true. Things don't have to be overstated to make a point.

There is a lot to be said for this. With the discussion of Van Cliburn, I found myself thinking about the negative aspects of his win at the Tchaikovsky, which is an over-emphasis on competitions and the way that it has polarized audiences. There is too much emphasis on what can be measured, like the number of "correct" notes, in disregard of Charles Ives' advise to avoid playing all the wrong right notes, and not enough emphasis on making the sense of the music clear to the listener. There has also been too much "winner take all" attitude among audiences, as if only contest winners are worth considering, to the exclusion of anything else. This has also been pushed by the recording industry. Overall, it has been bad for the entire classical music industry.

Other industries as well, as this page illustrates: Fotoshop by Adobé.

God bless you. If I had said something like that about Cliburn, they would have come out of the wood work at me.

You are exactly correct on your assessment of the anti-music aspects of contests.

My late piano teacher, this website being the exception to the rule, used to ask his new students to name two of the last four Cliburn competition winners. When they couldn't, he would say: what does that tell you about those who came in second and third?

With rare exception, most contest winners have to form their own record label in order to get anything recorded. Further, when you look at the soloists for the major symphony orchestras on the east coast, most of them are from Europe. They are not Americans, who have won some contest.

When the concert pianist Frederic Chiu, who responded most positively to my video, didn't make the final round of the Cliburn, half of the audience got up and walked out in protest. Yet, Fred had to move to France for ten years in order to earn a living.

Finally, I have been to recitals of competition winners, one of whom won the Cliburn, and they didn't have a musical bone in their whole bodies.

You know what ?
It is easy to talk like this about pianists who have achieved remarkable success. But this is only empty talking, right.
What have you done? Did you win any major competition ? What makes you think that you are authorized to make such a comment ? IMO, nothing. So actually it has no value.

Instead learn to respect the hard work that those young pianists are putting everyday in a very competitive field.

I've been to recitals by several Van Cliburn winners over the years, and they were all good, some even great.

Among the best of them are Radu Lupu, Cristina Ortiz, Olga Kern and Alexander Kobrin. And those are just the first prize winners - I've also heard several of the runner-ups who are also excellent.

Pardon my saying, but from what you've shown, you don't have the ear or the knowledge to make a meaningful judgment on that. You know what you think, and that's about it.

Still waiting for you to say anything about that note in the Schumann that you were sure wasn't there. Not holding my breath, though.
One might think such a thing would give you pause about what you think your eyes and ears tell you, and some restraint about these expertly judgments that you think you can make. Evidently not.