Alfred Cortot plays Schumann Kinderszenen (1954 German radio recording)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- An unpublished May 2, 1954 Bayerischer Rundfunk recording featuring the great French pianist Alfred Cortot playing Schumann's Kinderszenen.
While Cortot's radio broadcasts of the Chopin Preludes, Second Sonata, and various other shorter works from this period have been released, his Schumann broadcast recordings (including this Kinderszenen and a Kreisleriana) have not. It is to be hoped that a proper reissue from the master tapes will be made, as despite the occasional slip of the finger (something that is always present in Cortot's later performances as well as many earlier ones), his playing is very fine and the recording captures his singing sonority, magical pedal effects, and soaring phrasing with great fidelity.
If you wish to support The Piano Files, please consider membership at my Patreon page: / thepianofiles
Timestamps
______________
No.1 "Of Foreign Lands and Peoples": 0:00
No.2 "A Curious Story": 1:30
No.3 "Blind Man's Bluff": 2:33
No.4 "Pleading Child": 3:10
No.5 "Happy Enough": 4:00
No.6 "An Important Event": 5:14
No.7 "Dreaming": 6:03
No.8 "At The Fireside": 8:27
No.9 "Knight of the Hobbyhorse": 9:20
No.10 "Almost Too Serious": 10:04
No.11 "Frightening": 11:34
No.12 "Child Falling Asleep": 13:13
No.13 "The Poet Speaks": 14:56
This rendition is as fresh and beautiful as a spring day after a rain. What sensitivity and imagination. Thank you for posting.
Each attack , each phrase so communicative so alive! This is so late in his life .I don't know when he stopped concertizing. I've never cared a great deal about Cortot but many of hi recordings say what noone else has! This is incredibly played.Each phrase so personal !It's taken me 20 years just to be able to really hear how wonderful Cortot was /is. His Chopin etudes ,impromptus etc . i bought as a teen in Los Angeles in Japanese pressings but I didn't know anything . It was like the average person looking at a Rolls Royce who knows nothing about automotive or even the interior luxury . I'm glad he made a lot of recordings and taped lectures exist too ! Rachmaninoff was unkind about his playing : the man had soul and depth to his playing why he hobnobbed with the Nazi's and stayed in France and took their assigments as head of Culture is just an eternal embarassment likeGeiseking and Furtwangler . These things matter ofcourse -politics is life and death and his ambitions here are poorjudgements but look around at present day Americsa and I see much worse. Republicans should all be put in a prison ! I'll have to see Cortots letters & .His copious verbiage in his editions are something ! They are for those who are at that level and can respect his words.The gorgeous tonal mixing in no.7 is unforgettable ; each attack says what he wants it to !
I get that. it will always seems so pointedly inconsistent to me how such profound musicians could harbor sympathies to agents of prejudice and bigotry.
@@lunchmind It is also worth noting that Heidegger and Sartre gravitated respectively toward the Hitlerian Nazis and th Stalinist Communists. They were perhaps the two most brilliant and original philosophers of the 20th century.
@@MrKlemps yes you are right and thank you. But as a socialist, I never considered the Soviet Union communist Marx and Engels hated dictatorships. I don't know what attracted Sartre to Stalin.
@@lunchmind Perhaps it was the sense of certitude--all that "planning"--in a world of blinding change. He was, of course, wrong and, in any case, politics was truly not his metier.
Please make it clear you're talking about Cortot not Rachmaninoff re nazis.
Nobody reached the magic of this poetic interpretation.
Horowitz's is pretty good though... 😏
I admire Horowitz,but in Chopin and Schumann there is a difference.Horowitz consulted with Cortot and I think it was about interpretation.Horowitz was a spider with his fingers,superior to Cortot,particularly when he began to loose his sight.
NADIE !
I remember reading up on Schumann when I began to learn about him and study his music (as a teenager). I often noticed that when he would write to Clara about some of his new piano compositions, including this one, he almost sounded apologetic that the pieces would not challenge her technique. He made similar comments when he told her about the A minor piano concerto.
Quelle richesse avons-nous là !! Merveilleux musicien et aussi innovateur d'où cette héritage culturel dense à l'ENM rue Cardinet.
His Chopin and Schumann are peerless.
Wonderful recording. Cortot was a genius. Very precious.
Dès les premières notes, pas l'ombre d'un doute. L'inspiration à l'état pur. L'artiste nous ouvre des univers de couleurs, de vibrations, d'atmosphères.
Perhaps Casals reconciled with Cortot after the war because the pianist was chastened. In any event, I hear more humanity, gentleness and depth in these late recordings. And, while this may be blasphemous, I feel it’s Schumann’s youthful, verdant romanticism that informs Cortot’s Chopin.
Thx for uploading
This contains some of Cortot's most reliable post-war playing
Quel phrasé !!!!!!!!
It´s fresh and temperamental... and he did "The Poet Speaks" better than anyone else.
Besides....he is the only one, who plays no. 1rythmically correct...3 against 4. It´s really very hard to do.
I think that only Mr. Horowitz played it in a comparable way. Imagine yourself, two elderly gentlemen, M. Cortot and Mr. Horowitz speaking to us through this piece about their dreams, fulfilled and not fulfilled, and about their life experience. Speechless...
*Mein 'Vorschlag' einer*
EQUALIZER-Einstellung
-10dB (60Hz)
-10dB (230Hz)
-10dB (910Hz)
- 8dB (4kHz)
+15dB (14kHz)
Hören "in *erster Reihe"!*
Die Intonation der Instrumente wird *nicht* verändert; da jedoch vor allem die mAn. *eigentlich kaum hörbaren* Obertöne zunehmend verstärkt sind, gewinnt die Wiedergabe merklich an Brillianz.
(An der Tonquelle sind zunächst die Obertöne maßgeblich und stark mit-verantwortlich für die "Tonfärbung" des Klanges. Je weiter entfernt ein Hörer, umso deutlicher lässt die sehr hochfrequente Signalintensität nach; *schneller* als die tiefere! Für ältere Aufnahmen bereits relevant beim Input in die unterschiedlich im Raum postierten Mikrofone. Dem wird mit neuester Aufnahmetechnik natürlich Rechnung getragen. Bei *früheren* Produktionen wirkt hier mMn. eine moderate Verstärkung der in einer Aufnahme geschwächt vorhandenen obersten Frequenzen diesem Hochtondefizit etwas entgegen; hören Sie selbst! Erstaunlich - -)
Cortot always had a great affinity for the piano music of Schumann. His 1930s recording of Kinderszenen is even more magical than this late account.
6:04 no. 7
14:57 last piece
Wonderful! Thanks for sharing.
Happy New Year! 🎹🎉
ШЕДЕВР
Interesting interpretation, very colourful playing.
Cortot seems to have given up playing Pleyel and started playing Steinway. The brilliance of tone and music disappears. On the contrary, the tempo slows down, emphasizing the polyphonic part of his music. I feel like the magic door of his music has been opened.
You sound as if you are one member of the audience to whom a performer would be delighted to play since you would be able to appreciate what subtleties the pianist was making. May your deeper understanding of what is "going on behind the scenes" continue for many years!
Beauté inouie du phrasé, caractérisation parfaite de chaque pièce, synthèse absolue, qui fond idéalement le détail dans le tout... nous tenons là une interprétation quasi "définitive" des Kinderszenen par un des plus grands musiciens-pianistes du XX ème siècle.
Le dernier mouvement n'est ce pas vraiment un renouveau; c'est la réalité ultime. Alors, les yeux
du pianiste doit être fermés, des le commencement jusqu'a la fin. La musique signifie, non seul
la mort d'enfance, mais la mort, tout court. C'est le chant du cygne, et même un adieu à l'époque.
You're probably also aware of the Suite release I mentioned below.
So beautiful...
Surprisingly good, considering the date, How do you think it compares with his many other versions?
2:33 3rd
3:11 4th
Quite sublime.
Cortot egy mérce mindenkinek, pontossàga és arànyérzéke példamutato! Minden a helyén van!!
Fantastique !
EL TITULO DE POETA DEL PIANO LE CAE EXTRAORDINARIAMENTE BIEN.
6:37
Guiomar Novaes Schumann where is?
💝💝💝 TY
Thank you so much for this wonderfull Christmas gift.
¡Sublime!
Beautiful piece
M. Incroyable! He makes other pianists sound boring. A true Frenchman playing his countryman's music. I am referring to the performance of Frank. However, music is a universal language.
Schumann was not Cortot's countryman; Schumann was german ... 😄
@@marcelamberg7309 You are right. I meant this comment for a different video. Cortot was famous for his playing of many composers, especially Chopin who was Polish. So what?
If this is really an "unpublished" radio recordings, I would say it is an astonishingly awesome posting and I have to deeply thank you for this. But I have kind of doubt about it. I remember there were many "live" or "radio recordings" issued by Italian labels previously, which are actually the studio recordings for HMV in 1950`s. Those recordings were not broadly known to Western audiences because they were not reissued for many years, until the EMI box set was issued recently. That set includes Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana which Cortot re-recorded in 1951 to 1953. (Those were well known to Japanese fans as they were reissued by Toshiba-EMI many times---but wrongly credited as recordings of 1930`s.) Do you really think this one is not the post-war HMV recording but truly the unpublished one?
I've compared the studio recordings - they are different.
I haven't done a computerized side-by-side but I noticed a significant difference in accuracy. The big mistake with Cortot issues came when Phillips' Great Pianists series included an unpublished 1950s recording stating that it was a 1930s recording... one would think someone would have noticed the difference in sound quality. I'm not aware of the Italian labels having put out studio recordings instead of broadcasts - do you remember which works?
Thank you for answering this. And I agree with you! I listened to these recordings carefully and they are obviously different from the 1950`s studio recordings while they are definitely done by Cortot! So, now I really appreciate your posts for these precious gifts. Deeply thanks to you!
Regarding those Italian labels, Suite, HUNT and Melodram released Chopin`s sonata #2 and/or several short pieces such as nocturnes and waltzes as "live" recordings, which are actually from post-war HMV recordings. As far as I remember those labels released the CDs using the same sources with Cetra LPs. Those were "filling up" for the real live recordings of Chopin's Preludes and Schumann's concerto. I will not go in detail here, but if you have the EMI Box set, you will find out the original recordings for those pseudo "live" recordings.
@@pianissimoatmidnight Are you certain that all the short works are studio recordings? I remember the Berceuse and Nocturnes from the Hunt CD sounding quite different in tonal quality and interpretation - I will run some tests. Unfortunately because those labels could be unreliable one must be cautious. It does appear, however, that Cortot did indeed make some German broadcasts at the time, and the Schumann here does seem to be authentic. It appears that an engineer reported that the performances required quite a bit of editing - probably more than the EMI recordings received. I'll do some checking and report back...