I've only heard a few of his performances, but when I heard this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qAYv5c6-Lc&list=PLF14E3CDFCF742651

I was severely disappointed. The really strange rhythmic distortions, outrageous mistakes in not such a difficult piece, and totally bizarre(to my thinking) ideas. Even if all the horrendous mistakes weren't there I'd find it very bizarre. For example, the first page introduction is played so fast it makes no sense musically either by itself or in relation to the rest of the piece. The few other recordings I had heard from him didn't leave such a negative impression, so I'm curious if others find this as disappointing as I did. So many seem to revere him as one of the greatest pianists, but this recording has left a truly negative impression for me.

What do you think?

These Cortot recordings seem at least much more reasonable if IMO nothing to write home about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2fRWWW_6MM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yae0Pq_HqsE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOJIOIpnLQE

Interesting find.
I agree to a great extent.

The flaws are outrageous, especially I think in the first portion, like the first minute or so. But I love a lot of the things throughout the piece that you probably find bad and even bizarre. And do you not like the section starting at 1:02? (And continuing for a fair while?) I think it's truly great, and BTW the section is fairly free of goofs.

But even for someone like me who loves those things he does, the bad aspects are striking -- not just that there are wrong notes, but that quite a few of them seem not even close, that even when he gets the right notes, the attack and tone seem often to be drastically crude (can't tell for sure because of the primitive recording quality), and his seeming not to give much of a darn about how it is sounding because of how imperturbable he seems about it all. In fact, I recall having heard (or read) that Cortot didn't always care about details of his recordings, most famously wrong notes, but this seems of a different order than what we'd ever expect. If I didn't know who the player was, I would think it was a top-level performer, but that he was under some impairment like substances or senility. I don't mean that I suspect either in this instance -- I don't -- but that's the impression it would give me.

I think the first recording is from late in his life -- in the 1940s and most certainly in the 1950s his playing was sloppy at best. But his younger recordings are brilliant and some of the most musical I've ever heard. Of course most of them still have plenty of flubbed notes, but nowhere near as many as the later recordings.

EDIT: for a remarkably Cortot-esque sense of rubato, romanticism, sensitivity and music, but a much cleaner sound and more precise technique, listen to some of Samson Francois' recordings.

Indeed; bear in mind that the technical aspect behind performance has come to mean greatly more than it used to; of course wrong notes are wrong but, um, if the flow was correct (and fresh) then it's entirely a success, regardless of the anatomy...I mean, there's still room for romanticism in piano but for how much longer I couldn't dare say.

I've heard many Cortot recordings, especially Chopin third scherzo. It was horrendous. I don't get it, can someone explain to me why he is praised?

EDIT:

Also.. he obviously had technique, so how the heck was he so inaccurate a lot of the time?

Harold Schonberg talks a lot about this in "The Great Pianists," which BTW you really should read! (You'll love it.) Cortot did a lot besides play -- conducting, writing, editing scores....and very extensive teaching, which he was much more interested in than most top-level pianists. Schonberg has a great line about it, something like, "So how did he have time to keep his fingers in shape? The answer is simple: he didn't." I'd guess it was more than just not having the time; he just wasn't as interested to put in the time for practicing as he was for that other stuff -- and if you look at something like how many prodigies just gave up piano completely at a certain point because they couldn't get interested any more in finger wiggling, it's not completely surprising that someone would have felt that way. You might say, then he shouldn't have performed at all. I can only guess that he liked playing and performing, as long as he could do it on his own terms and as long as audiences were interested -- and indeed they were. He didn't need everybody to like what he did, he just needed some -- and there were lots.

So you are older than I would have thought!

Cortot was famously erratic - but his virtuosity was up there with the best when he'd practised properly. Many great pianists cite Cortot as their favourite pianist, with good reason, even though they don't - and wouldn't - play with his rhythmic freedom and flexibility.

How many of today's pianists can play this piece at this speed with this degree of power and brilliance and flair - and accuracy?
http://youtu.be/sKQ5tWWC_-c

BTW, this transfer is very muddy, but my CD of this performance is much clearer and does show that he isn't fudging anything.

Think of Las Vegas. At Las Vegas, you have the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramide, the Taj Mahal, and so much more. All in one city, all built in the space of a couple of decades. Really! What a waste, prior history! Centuries and centuries of pharoahs and maharajas and Eiffel's pavaning before the ignorant people who bowed their heads, never seeing the emperor's new clothes ... when in America we can do it better, faster, stronger.

Why didn't humanity just wait ?

Really, I think that Joel's post shows so much insight that it has to be re-read, and re-re-read ...

That reminds me - I was reading a critic/blogger on Cliburn (someone who reviews for a major newspaper in the US (accepting, for the moment, the questionable premise that such a thing still exists)). This person made it sound as if Cliburn was way, way out there on the extreme edge of interpretive freedom. And there seemed to be a certain "eeiuwww" reaction to that sort of thing in the tone of the writing. Just imagine, playing Romantic music in a genuinely Romantic interpretation - how utterly disgusting.

Yes, one man's "expression" is another man's "stop MESSING with the music, ffs!" :-)

Dial up some recorded performances of technically undemanding pieces. Beethovens's "Moonlight" sonata movement is a good example. You'll hear an amazing variety of approaches. Some just can't seem to cope with its simplicity and overload it with portentious pauses and hesitations, completely killing the melodic flow. In my opinion. Perhaps you like that sort of thing? That's fine.

For years, I had based my opinion of Cortot on the lp of Chopin waltzes that was in my local library. As a high school student in a moderate-sized town during the mid-70's, I had no access to his earlier (better) reordings.

My initial impression - or uninformed opinion - was that perhaps he had a little too much wine to drink before the recording sessions. Nowadays, I feel more benign towards his Chopin waltzes: Despite some feeble passagework, there's a sense of spontaniety and recklessness that I now do enjoy - an approach that I couldn't fully comprehend as a "serious" piano student.

Or maybe now, I'm the one who has too much wine to drink while listening

I forget who said this, about his earlier recordings: "..he was looking for the 'opium' in the music" - a wonderful description.

For me, depends on where.
There?? Probably not.
This waltz?
Absolutely -- if done well. And here, it's done both well and poorly at the same time.

Daniel Barenboim(Bareness according to spell check) said it although I don't really understand what he meant. In this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2fRWWW_6MM

Apparently he used his right hand to help him play the Ravel left hand concerto. It still remains the most inaccurate recordings haha

Cortot was past it and broke when he did his recordings. Not to mention being terminally afficted with an extreme case of red light fever. (I had this from a student of one of his students.) Apparently his recordings in no way represent what he could do live in his prime.

(Having been told, "you sound so much better in person" myself, I'm willing to believe this.)

Really??
Not denying it, because I don't know, but I would have thought that couldn't be, because of all his various activities including especially teaching, which would be expected to bring a lot of income to someone of his stature.


I think you need to explain the phrase....

With due apologies, I have never understood Cortot's claim to fame. I have read all this stuff about his mistakes being those of a 'god', what the heck? They are just sloppy mistakes.

Of course he was a renown teacher and editor, but if he was a great pianist, then it must have been before his recordings. I could not get through his recording of the Chopin Etudes, and without Cortot's name attached to them, it seems highly unlikely they would be at all known today.

But he certainly had a gift for self-promotion.

Come on Mark, you know what red light fever means - or maybe in the rarified heights you inhabit you don't. It's the absolute paralysis that affects beginners (such as inhabit ABF, marginal players (like me) and apparently some professionals new to recording (like Corot) when they have to record. It's in reference to that little red light that means the Zoom machine is on and recording your every breath, your every hesitation, your every mistake, and your hungry kid or cat crying, for posterity. It turns some of us to stone. It turns my hands into crab claws skittering across the keys which is why I've given up trying to record anything.

Re broke - after WWII Cortot got in a lot of trouble with "his public" and lost market share because he supposedly collaborated with the Nazis - in other words he played for them like a sensible person who wanted to survive in one piece - instead of heroically defying them and being killed or imprisoned. We're all heroes in hindsight if we aren't there.

I wouldn't have asked if I did!
My heights aren't that rarefied but I never heard of it.


I'd be surprised if Cortot had anything like that, but I don't know....


Yes, I know about that. (And well said.)
But I would have thought he could still have taught as much as he wanted, and been paid very considerably for it.

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.