Alfred Cortot
- Piano Concertos, Volume 1
Schumann:
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Chopin: Piano
Concerto No.2, Op. 2
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 everyone of those things, and as the nourishment of each of them
contributed to the others, be became an important musical figure and one of the
most respected performers of the Twentieth Century.
He was born, to a
Swiss mother and French father, in Nyon, Switzerland on 26tb September, 1877. The family moved to Paris when
be was a small child, and after initial piano lessons from his sisters be was
admitted to the Paris Conservatoire where be studied first with Emil Descombes,
one of Chopin's last pupils, then – more Importantly - with Louis Diemer, 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. (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.) 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.) Cortot's touring career was launched
immediately, but his fascination with Wagner led him to study that 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 Societe des festivals Iyriques
specifically to conduct - and stage, at the age of 24 - the first Paris
performance of Gotterdammerung (17th May, 1902j He also worked in both
Paris and Lille in various concert societes (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.
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), Faure, Chabrier, Dukas,
Saint-Saens, d'Indy, Ravel, Florent Schmitt, and Deodat de Severac. There is
also an important two-volume book from 1934 titled Cours d'interpretation
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 1940s,
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.
Pianist and
Conductor
The sound of
Cortot's pianism is unique, readily recognizable. His repertoire encompassed
music from all eras, including his own time (and reaching into such composers
as Scriabin). His Bach playing was described as having dignity and nobility
with an unmistakable human element (and there are recordings of him conducting
performances of the six Bach Brandenburg Concertos as well as orchestral
music of Couperin) His stage appearance as both conductor and pianist gave the impression
of a strong personality which never intruded on the music, and - drawing again
on his own teachings - there was great architectural structure in his music-making
with an extraordinary balance of intellect and emotion. Perhaps the Germanic
part of his training contributed to a modified French approach. Certainly his pianism
exhibited greater weight than most French pianists of the time summoned, but he
never hammered on the instrument, commenting that "sound and fury have
nothing to do with power". He said "my colleagues taught me the art
of making the piano sing", undoubtedly a reference to his extensive work
with singers in the early part of his career His first recordings were as
accompanist to singers. There is, of course, that matter of dropped notes, both
in recordings and concerts, and of memory lapses in public appearances. If he
is somewhat "famous" for these in our era of note-perfect
expectation, most of us feel his musicality is so overwhelming as to override the
imperfections. But it remains curious that this man who truly had a remarkable technique
(one may quote numerous examples of his recorded repertoire which verify this)
could become so progressively careless about technical details.
Cortot's pianism
had an almost uncanny sense of rubato which seemed to flow naturally from his
great sense of compositional architecture. It was a masculine but poetic
approach which, in its imaginative, sometimes seemingly-improvisational
variety, reached from sparkling brilliance and tenderness to deeply-felt
tragedy It is not surprising that Cortot was drawn particularly to the piano
music of Chopin and Schumann (and Liszt, too), Chopin had freed the piano,
technically and emotionally, so it could express variety, expression, and depth
beyond anything known before Cortot spoke of Chopin's "inner voice of the
soul which dictated" his composing. And Cortot's writing, which could be
florid as well as enlightening, led him - as he contemplated a plaster cast of
one of Chopin's hands - to speak of "a skin through the pores of which
everything ignoble has evaporated." Cortot's Schumann was a case of the Romantic
pianist responding fully to the Romantic composer.
The Recording
Artist
Cortot was a
prolific recording artist; he made more than 150 records in the 1920s and 1930s
alone. But he regarded his recordings less as a documentation than as a career -
and perhaps, financial - necessity (his first solo recordings, for instance,
went far in paving the way for his highly successful London debut, and his
early recording of Weber's Invitation to the Dance was a best-seller).
To him, music was too much of a living thing for anyone performance to stand as
a representation of his art, and any given performance was to him a result of
the mood of the moment. In the later years especially, he preferred to let his
recording producer choose which takes to release, partly because of his lack of
interest in recordings, and partly because he did not want to listen to captured
mistakes.
The current disc
contains Cortot's only recording of the Chopin F minor Concerto (he never
recorded the E minor) and the last of his three recordings of the Schumann.
The first of the Schumanns, an acoustical recording, dated from about 1923, the
second and third, both electrical recordings, from 1927 and 1934, respectively;
the conductor on all three was Landon Ronald.
The
Interpreter
Excerpts
(samplings, perhaps more accurately) from Cortot's remarks to his students
about these two concertos might give us somewhat of a "geographical
map" of his approach to them.
After noting that
Chopin's "music remained, in spite of (virtuosic) preoccupation, emotional
music", he says "the secret of the poetic interpretation of the first
movement lies in the strongly marked opposition of a determined element and a
second all languour and charm The designs generally called' ornamental ' are
incorporated with the (first) theme; expressive declamation will suit them The
second part of the first subject is intense, urgent, and tenderly passionate;
in it we see continual aspirations struggling with continual misgivings; put
the acting personality in a romantic attitude at once Chopin avoids the
recapitulation of the first theme; when he recapitulates he goes right to the
heart of the piece, the second subject; expose it with tender feeling This
entire passage should be played as a cadenza; suppose this section is a portion
of a barcarolle. The piano resume the initial theme in A flat with a more
dreamy account. The different weights of various harmonies ought to give you
the feeling of rhythm all through."
Cortot notes that
the Larghetto is a musical portrait of Constancia Gladkowska, with whom
Chopin was in love at the time of its composition. The movement, he said, "comprises
two elements: one dreamy, the other dramatic. We are faced with everything that
can be aroused in the twenty-year-old-soul - agitation, revolt, vehemence. The melody
is described as con molta delicatezza ". In the central episode
"are anger, violent impatience, perhaps jealousy!"
The third
movement, Cortot says, “is a peasant’s dance, a krakowiak artistically
stylized. Even if melancholy intervene" in the piece it must remain like a
dance. In many places the right hand has only an atmospheric role; in music,
a" in painting, there are always foregrounds and background". Like
Schumann's Concerto, the coda in this piece is a foreign element, added to the
work in a spirit of capricious fantasy."
Cortot
describe" the Schumann Concerto as “a work of passion. The element
of virtuosity is marvellously balanced with the poetic element. The subject of
the latter is obviously always the single leitmotiv - the love of
Schumann for Clara. In this instance happiness, both attained and shared, is
reflected.
"At the
beginning of the first movement the direction allegro affettuoso guides
us so far a" the interpretation is concerned; the first four bar"
constitute an 'introduction', enthusiastic in character. The expression we
should give to the theme is one of warm tenderness. From its first exposition
the theme should appear endowed with a character so definite, with climax
points so obviously placed, that the hearer can recognize it without difficulty
in its successive transformations" He speaks of an animato which
occurs later as demanding ''as much animation in character as in
movement," and that an even later andante espressivo "does not
allow of too much slowness; it is not a vague reverie." And he states that
"if the brief cadenza written by Beethoven for his Concerto in E flat
(Emperor) did not exist, that of Schumann would be the finest in existence…
(it) presents a peculiarity of not being conclusive, but of leading on to a new
episode, of opening a window on a new horizon.”
He describes the
second movement as "an ingenious growth" and say' "such a flower
of the fields is charming enough in its delicate fragrance. We should not 'gild
the lily'. Do not make an attack for each design; the entire movement is full
of a charming delicacy, shyness, and reserve."
Cortot's comments
on the final movement are too technically detailed to quote here.
The foregoing is
noted only to show a small part of the immense depth of understanding Cortot
had of the music he loved and performed so well In the end, happily, we have
his music-making preserved on recordings such as these to experience some of
the true measure of the man and his singular art.
Norman Pellegrini