CORTOT Concertos, Volume 1: Chopin, Ravel, Saint-Saëns (1935/39) - PASC443

The French-Swiss pianist Alfred Cortot (1877–1962) was never known for spotless technique, and if that is at the top of your list of requirements for listening to keyboard concertos you might want to pass this up. Everyone else, however, should snap it up. All three concertos are given splendid performances here. Although Pristine puts the Ravel first on the disc, I started the headnote with the Chopin because it is to my ears the most special of the three.

Cortot studied with a pupil of Chopin’s, and so this can be said to be music-making fairly close to the source. But our knowledge of that biographical fact should not influence the way we hear this. There were probably many pianists who studied with pupils of Chopin whose work we would have no interest in. What distinguishes this performance is the poetry of the playing, the subtle use of rubato throughout, the way Cortot shapes phrases giving them both firmness and suppleness at the same time. This is playing of great nuance and shading, some of it staying long in the memory after the recording is finished. The Larghetto of this concerto is by itself more than worth the price of the disc. It is an object lesson in Chopin playing. Cortot employs an infinite variety of dynamics. Between forte and piano is a whole wide world, and he carefully gauges his dynamic level so as to create a constant sense of flow and forward motion. I have heard this recording in earlier releases, and Pristine’s Andrew Rose can be said to have opened up a new world with his remastering here. Never has the piano sound been so alive, and never has the degree of colors employed by Cortot been as apparent.

Cortot was a thorough musician—an important conductor as well as pianist—and it is the thoroughness of his musicianship that shines through these performances. What I find particularly interesting is that although there are occasional wrong notes, there are also passages of surprising technical brilliance. The implication of this, at least as I hear it, is not that he couldn’t achieve a high level of technique but rather that it was not of prime importance to him. Eloquence of phrasing, maintaining a sense of freedom throughout a performance, giving the impression of creating the music while performing it, these were his guideposts.

The Ravel and Saint-Saëns performances are on a similarly high level, although I found the very ending of the Ravel surprisingly timid, lacking in the snap that I expect there (and that the performance had led me to expect here). The dark drama of the Ravel, and the glistening sparkle of the Saint-Saëns, all of this and more is conveyed in these spontaneous recordings. The final bars of the Ravel notwithstanding, the accompaniments of Barbirolli in the Chopin and Munch in the other two are as superb as you would expect. The Ravel dates from 1939; the Chopin and Saint-Saëns date from 1935. The piano sound on Pristine’s XR Stereo remastering is remarkably full and rich. This is an essential disc for pianophiles.

Henry Fogel
This article originally appeared in Issue 39:2 (Nov/Dec 2015) of Fanfare Magazine.