Chopin: Piano Concerto No 2 / Schumann: Piano Concerto (Rec 1934/35)

"This is one of the more interesting items in Naxos's burgeoning historical series...At its bargain price this release should prove highly attractive to those with specialized interests."
- Fanfare (Mortimer H. Frank) May/June 2001

"Naxos 8.110612 offers Cortot's splendid performances of the Schumann Concerto (1934 version, with Ronald) and Chopin Second (with Barbirolli, from 1935), with the sound brilliantly restored by Mark Obert-thorn."
- Fanfare (Leslie Gerber) March/April 2001

"THE CLARITY and warmth of the Naxos transfers by Mark Obert-Thorn achieve wonders with these recordings, made in the mid-1930s. They enable us to appreciate the art of Alfred Cortot as rarely before. The great French pianist was famous for his wrong notes and (in later years) memory lapses, but also for his magical touch and lovely singing tone and a flexibility of phrasing and movement as natural as breathing. In his enchanting account of Chopin's Piano Concerto No 2, the tempo is constantly varied, but always within a strong rhythmic framework. The more challenging Schumann Piano Concerto has its blemishes, especially in the finale, but the sweep and subtlety of Cortot's playing in the opening movement and the charm of the intermezzo are remarkable by any standards."
- The Sunday Times (David Cairns) November 19, 2000

"These classic performances require no additional accolades from me. They were great; they remain great. Alfred Cortot recorded the Schumann concerto twice electrically, and this disc contains his second (and better) of the two performances. ...Both concertos find this sometimes frustratingly careless artist at his best. Every note matters: Cortot fills the music with characteristic nuances of touch and phrasing while never losing sight of the long line. In particular, the highly ornamented melodies of the slow movement of the Chopin concerto offer a positive clinic on the poetic use of rubato for maximum expressive effect. Sonically, these mid-1930s recordings balance the piano nicely against orchestral accompaniments that are clear but not lacking in body, even if typically restricted in dynamic range. Mark Obert-Thorn's transfers retain the warmth and clarity, while minimizing surface noise... If you haven't heard these seminal performances, now's the time."
- Classics Today (David Hurwitz), January 14, 2001

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The Complete Musician:
Pianist. Conductor. Innovator. Champion of music of his time. Educator. Editor. Writer on music, musicians, and music appreciation. Collector of priceless manuscripts and first editions. Alfred-Denis Cortot was every one of those things, and as the nourishment of each of them contributed to the others, he became one of the most important musical figures and respected performers of the twentieth Century.

He was born, to a Swiss mother and French father, in Nyon, Switzerland on 26th September, 1877. The family moved to Paris when he was a small child, and after initial piano lessons from his sisters he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire where he studied first with Emil Descombes, one of Chopin's last pupils, then - more importantly - with Louis Diémer, one of the best-known French pianists of the time. Cortot took an auspicious first prize in piano in 1896, leading to performances of Beethoven concertos with both the Lamoureux and Colonne orchestras. He was, in fact, regarded as a Beethoven specialist at the time. One might speculate that his love of that composer's music, and especially the music of Wagner, was sparked by his association in those student years and at Bayreuth with Edouard Risler (some four years Cortot's senior, a Wagner and Beethoven specialist, with whom Cortot played Wagner opera at the piano in Risler transcription.) The Cortot's touring career was launched immediately, but his fascination with Wagner led him to study the composer's music with J. Kniese at Bayreuth during the summers of 1898 until 1901, during which time he was a repetiteur under conductors including Mottl and Richter. He had the Wagner operas memorised and could play through them at the piano. Back in Paris, he organized the Société des festivals lyriques specifically to conduct D and stage, at the age of 24 D the first Paris performance of Götterdämmerung (17th May, 1902). He also worked in both Paris and Lille in various concert sociétés (some of his own creation) over the next five years, leading the first Paris performance of Beethoven's Missa solemnis, Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem, and Liszt's St Elizabeth, as well as championing Wagner and conducting performances of published and unpublished music of contemporary French composers.

In the midst of this, in 1905 he organized, along with the violinist Jacques Thibaud and cellist Pablo Casals, one of the great trios of all time, one which - over its spasmodic years of collaboration and its still highly-regarded recordings - is credited with bringing chamber music to greater public cognizance and appreciation than it had enjoyed previously.

He taught at the Paris Conservatoire from 1907 to 1920, and in 1918 founded, with violinist Adolphe Mangeot, the Ecole Normale de musique, to this day one of the finest music schools in the world. He remained its director until his death. His annual summer courses in piano interpretation drew participants from all over the world, and his teaching was thorough, to say the least. His students had to give written analyses of works before them to better understand the musical personalities of their composers as well as the music at hand. Form had to be analyzed into what Cortot called a "geographical map" of each work so it could be played more intelligently, and he stressed freedom to express within firm structure, speaking of the "fruitful illusion which leads the interpreter to believe he is the composer of the work which needs his collaboration, and to mould its expression according to the mysterious secret of his inner dream". In 1928 he wrote Principes rationnels de la technique pianistique, considered one of the finest books on piano interpretation as it deals with virtually every technical problem a pianist can encounter. In somewhat "full circle", Cortot recorded the thirty-two Beethoven piano sonatas in the last years of his life, recordings which remained unreleased more than 35 years after his death.

Cortot wrote three books on French piano music, the first two of which were especially effective in fostering a wider appreciation of composers including Debussy, Franck (on whose music Cortot was considered an expert), Fauré, Chabrier, Dukas, Saint-Saëns, d'Indy, Ravel, Florent Schmitt, and Déodat de S&3233;verac. There is also an important two-volume book from 1934 titled Cour d'interprétation which, though not "written" by Cortot, is a wide-ranging compilation by Jeanne Thieffry of "observations", as Cortot called them, from master classes he gave over several years. It contains highly-detailed comments about composers, their piano music, and quite specific aspects of both the techniques and spirit of its performance.

Cortot made more than eighty editions of piano music of various composers, most notably Schumann and Chopin, including the latter's Ballades, Preludes, and Etudes published in four volumes. As in his teaching, he included in these editions detailed suggestions for surmounting the technical difficulties in the music as well as writing about the music's character and extolling its worth. He also amassed a large collection of manuscripts and original editions.

And through all this, he was a tireless and internationally-acclaimed pianist, concertizing and recording, and these were activities for which he was at the time, and remains, best known.

He had been appointed High Commissioner of Fine Arts during the Vichy collaborationist government during World War II, and performed in Germany during that time. As a result, the postwar French government suspended him from public musical activity for a time in the l940s, but he continued to concertize and make recordings well into the 1950s. His last public performance was in 1958, his last master class came in 1961. He had basically retired in 1960 to Lausanne, where he died 15th June, 1962.

Norman Pellegrini