Alfred Cortot plays Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 'live' in 1947
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- Опубліковано 24 лип 2024
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An April 13, 1947 concert performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.1 in C Major Op.15 with Alfred Cortot as soloist, accompanied by Victor Desarzens and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne.
Cortot had a long career with the gramophone - four decades of solo and concerto recordings (although some discs accompanying singer Félia Litvinne predate the first of these by more than 15 years). However, in his many hours of recordings, he did not produce any commercially issued recordings of solo or concerted works of Beethoven (there is some chamber music put down in the 1920s), despite these being a major part of his repertoire for decades. He did record the complete Beethoven Sonatas in the late 1950s when he was around 80 years old, in two formats - as entire performances and as lecture-demonstrations in which he played excerpts while speaking about the work - but his technique had deteriorated so much by this point that his pianism was such a pale shadow of its previous glory, so these largely remained unreleased; only a few complete Sonatas and some lecture excerpts were released in 2012 in the 40-disc Anniversary Edition on EMI France, and while there are moments of beauty, his playing is unstable and not at the standard of the bulk of his sanctioned recordings.
When it comes to Beethoven's concertos, it is a great shame that Cortot recorded none of them as they were all in his repertoire for quite some time. In fact, Cortot recorded surprisingly little for piano and orchestra: despite a repertoire that included the complete Beethoven and Saint-Saens Concertos, and Rachmaninoff's Third, he only set down five works for piano and orchestra (the Schumann, Chopin F Minor, Saint-Saens 4th, Ravel Left-Hand, and Franck Symphonic Variations - the Franck and Schumann more than once).
However, we are fortunate that this 1947 broadcast was discovered and released (kudos to scholar Frederic Gaussin for his role here), as it is thus far the only concerto broadcast of Cortot playing a concerto that he had not already recorded in the studio. The recording was available only once on the relatively obscure label Tahra in 2007.
This concert took place not long after the French pianist moved to Switzerland from France, after having been banned from public performance for a year due to his association with the Vichy regime and his subsequent poor reception at his return performances in Paris (he had been booked to play the Schumann Concerto and the orchestra walked off stage when Cortot came on, and he played a solo concert instead).
Although Cortot was not at the peak of his powers at the time (he was approaching the age of 70), his precision had not waned to the extent that it would over the coming years, as referenced above. Despite just a few inaccuracies not significantly worse than some of what is heard in his discs from the previous decade (and one lapse in the last movement), there is much to enjoy in this remarkable performance. Cortot's distinctive singing sonority, magical pedal effects, soaring phrasing, and evocative timing are all in plain abundance. The interplay between left and right hands is as magnificent in this reading as it is in the pianist's celebrated Chopin and Schumann recordings, and his expansive rubato and sumptuous nuancing are wonderful complements to his robust accenting. There are also some interesting adjustments where he plays in a different register and adds some robust bass octaves at the beginning of orchestral tuttis. What is unclear is why he did not play the first movement cadenza.
A stunning performance and fascinating historical document of one of the most important pianists of the 20th century.
"Cortot was unquestionably one of the great pianists of our time, he had astonishing power. He interpeted Beethoven magnificently..." (From "Joys and Sorrows", Pablo Casals's autobiography). He says this for the first time they met, I wish there were Beethoven records from his youth. But of course, this recording is also great. Thank you!
Cortot is definitely one of my piano heroes and warts and all some of his recordings are just sublime. This concerto by Beethoven has these moments and his way of nuancing and phrasing in the slow movement is great!! Thanks again Mark for another wonderful recording!
Cortot has a personality comparable to Debussy in French music. As a musician, he did a great deal of work. He founded the Conservatory and taught pianists. His disciples include Kempf, Haskil, Francois, Lipatti, Toyama, Michelangeli and Mizz Haas. He turned their weaknesses into strengths in the eyes of critics. There is no time to teach his learners. But he composed etude for the learners. As a conductor, he performed Wagner in Paris. He cured the German pronunciation of the French singer and choir, took the sound, conducted the practice, and gave the final performance. He didn't have time to practice his own piano. He was asked to travel after Wagner's performance. He went to the United States after six months of practice. He will perform a concert of five Beethoven concertos in the United States. His achievements as a pianist with regard to Chopin and Schumann are so great that it is not necessary to talk about them. He has no time to practice as a pianist and is talked about alongside Rubinstein, Horowitz and Backhous.Thank you very much hearing this recording.
Certainly a poetic pianist, even in this early Beethoven. As far as being 'better' in the older generation than now, that debate certainly exists, and not always to the detriment of today IMHO. One can find a certain heaviness to this, more appropriate for the later concertos and symphonies. That was common in those far off days before the 'original instruments/Ur Text" revelations. I like the lighter approach that captures the spirit of the young composer out to dazzle and impress, not overly concerned with profundity at that date in his life. But the music can bear it, and this is still wonderful to have, with moments on the piano that are sublime...
Cortot, though never a note-perfect pianist and whose work after World War II really declined, is on top of his game here! I don't think there is another performance that shows so clear an understanding of both the structural hinges of the music as well as its expressive force. The Orchestra is clearly not of the first rank but Cortot is worth the whole price of admission. Many thanks are owed the uploader.
You are right ; Cortot is more an artist than a technician and it is in this that his interpretations are magnificent, so human. He speaks as much to the work as to the heart of the spectator. Bravo, bravo Cortot!
Michelangeli.Note perfect, incredible sense of structure and not in need of doubling notes into octaves. Beethoven does not fancy this approach which is typical french. Michelangeli's rendering is "truth".
@@thepianocornertpc No interpretation can convey a single truth--"THE truth"--of a composer as variegated as Beethoven. I certainly did not, and would not, make such a claim.for Cortot's performance.
@@MrKlemps Sir...Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli's secret consists in creating a certain frame or structure of mentality which is made always ready to respond instantly, that is, immediately to what comes from the outside. While technical training is of great importance, it is after all artificially..calculatingly added and acquired. Unless the mind that avails itself of the technical skill somehow attunes itself to a state of utmost fluidity or mobility, anything acquired or superimposed lacks spontaneity, natural growth. This state prevails when the mind is awakened to satori. What Michelangeli aimed at was this realization. It cannot be taught by any system designed for this purpose, it must simply grow from within. His system was really no system in the proper sense.As soon as an intellectual interpretation takes place, the whole thing goes awry..He once said:: When you want to see it, see it at once. When you begin to think, you miss the point. Happy New Year Sir.
@thepianocornertpc I should say only that instant readiness of the whole is hardly a common capacity. It sounds like more like an ideal. Yet it seems highly unlikely that if Michelangeli did possess it, he should be the only performer to do so. So first of all I should be interested in what other performers had it? Also do you think it possible to have it for some composers but not for others? Clearly someone favoring an "intellectual" approach (like Schnabel, his students, his very many "grandstudents"; Szigeti; Szell; Kolisch and a great many others) does not have it, nor is it possible for them to have it: Am I reading you correctly? Many thanks for your thought-provoking elucidation. Is
Love this performance! So beautifully interactive. Imagine playing this well at an advanced age!
THANKS!! FINALLY A COMPLETE RECORDINH CORTOT! This piano concerto! Thanks❤❤❤
He’s a poet
I've been looking for this for ages. Thank you so so much, Mark!
Wow, based on this performance I can just imagine how unique and vital his take on Beethoven Concerto 4 might have been!
You continue to amaze us with your discoveries! Despite the odd wrong note and finger-slip, his tone is still luminous, and his understanding of the structure of the piece is remarkable.
I listened to this out of curiosity, as one of my late piano professors at the Royal Academy of Music, either him or his teacher studied with Cortot. Also long ago I read a story about in a Cortot recital after World War II, some audiences brought metronomes to produce clicks to disturb him. As this is a very old recording I didn't expect much. But after listening, I must say I like Cortot's performance of this concerto very much.
What do you mean by "as this is a very old recording, I didn't expect much....".?? I would suggest you listen to Beethoven played by Fischer (Edwin and Annie!:-) Schnabel, Backhaus and others of this generation (not to mention Furtwängler, Klemperer and their colleagues.) Many very pleasant surprises await you:-)))
@@walterprossnitz3471 What I meant was, usually the older the recording, the more unwanted noise and deterioration of the recording (such as no longer in ptich). Also, recording technology of long ago played back on modern equipment can produce sound different to the original. This is particularly obvious with singing recording made a very long time ago. Over the years, I have heard some recordings of the Fischers, Schnabel, Backhaus, Furtwängler, Klemperer... The only one that had playback problems was Schnabel. I particularly liked Backhaus. It was a very long time ago I listened to these, and hope that the recordings remain in good condition.
Incredible imagination and sound. Orchestra plays along very well
MERCI pour cette magnifique, sublime interprétation comme de coutume avec Maître Alfred Cortot
Pure imaginative genius
A revelation!!! Thanks so much for this delight!
Thanks for sharing this .
Beautiful! Thank you.
A bewitching performance by any yardstick and one that really illustrates the wide range of possible interpretations and I loved the orchestra! Thanks once again, Mark!!
Thank You very much for this gem. Cortot paints the notes in the air. What a master! You can pardon to him minor technical errors here and there.
Perfect. Thank you.
A very good interpretation. Thank you for sharing!
I love Beethoven 🎹 Thanks for sharing 🎹
Un génie musical, un poète. Un phrasé magnifique, une sonorité exquise
What a touch! 9:44
Admirable.
wonderful
Une interprétation unique, inventive, musicale, vivante, en nuances qui chante et surclasse les autres haut la main.
Merci Maitre
Now I Know what BEAUTY & POETRY mean (2d mvt). Thank you for sharing !
Bravoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Maestro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DE LOS GRANDES.
Allegro con brio 0:01
Largo 13:23
Rondo- Allegro 23:40
What a musician, what a master!!!Every note has a different colorful meaning, every phrase has character. The importance of the Music minimize the maniac manner of an "perfection" pianistic mechanism which hase nothing to do with the melodic view of the music, the singing. Every passage is singing and that's why the missing notes have really no importance. Is not technical issue of Cortot but matter of choice. He take a lot of risk to let the music flow in a natural way. The Competitions destroyed the meaning of the music, a pure deformation of the essence itself. Today we have a lot of wonderful pianists but without music speaking. They think in a pianistic way only to be "perfect" for competitions not in music thinking, making such effects during performance only to electrify the public who in general thinks that this kind of music is fun. So, the model is really wrong and bad. Thank you for the publication!
❤❤👏👏👏
A rare document indeed, thank you!
I am not bothered at all by many wrong notes and own original [octaving, Tutti playing] ideas.
Cortot remains Cortot. His imagination is most remarkable.
But where is the cadenza of the first movement?
As I wrote in the notes below the player window... no idea why he didn't play the 1st movement cadenza...
@@ThePianoFiles Some pianists in that generation didn’t like Cadenzas . Rachmaninov and Moischewitz played also the Beethoven concerto 1 without cadenza.
I agree Sue... Equally Amazing is his protégée Ruth Slenczynska playing it Magnificently at 9!!
He even plays wrong notes beautifully! Great find.
Well stated! Lol
The sudden closure of the first movement without concluding cadenza and Cortot playing with the orchestra the coda is nevertheless very unusual and, to me, rather clumsy. IMHO.
Une pure merveille. L'incandescence du jeu de Cortot frise l'hallucination; la puissance de ses basses permet de mesurer l'ampleur de la vision de Schumann et fait de ce concerto le père de ceux de Brahms.
Personne n'a depuis lors atteint ce sommet...
Numéro One
He plays like a true chamber musician and all the better for it ... in comparison many modern recordings feel like they are thumped out with little regard for the orchestra.
Thanks
La poésie de Cortot fait oublier ses fausses notes. Son phrasé est inimitable.
Tout a fait!
Magnífica interpretación, gracias!! Saludos desde Puebla, México Efraín Dávila R
Cortot was a wonderful pianist in spite of his mistakes.When he was very old,a gap of memory was replaced by his improvisation on materials of the score.His friends said : now he is playing Cortot.But 1950 Kinderszenen interpretation is still sublime.
It was just after the ww2, very difficult times for Cortot.
"La musique de Beethoven ne se joue pas, ça se réinvente" - Anton Rubinstein après avoir ecouté l'Appasionata de Cortot
Anton Rubinstein died in 1894. Cortot was born in 1877.Check your facts before inventing comments.
Well that's a funny accusation! I think you're the one who should check the facts before writing embarrassing comments like this. Cortot started studying at the Paris Conservatoire in 1886 under Louis Diémer and Émile Descombes. At that time, Rubinstein had still not given his ultimate concert in Paris and during one of his last visits, he asked to hear one of Diémer's students. Diémer picked a very young Alfed Cortot who chose to play the Appassionata. If you search for "Albert Cortot (6/10) emission sans nom", you can even find an old radio episode in which Cortot himself recounts this meeting.
Check facts yourself in the future so I don't have to waste my time.
@@johnericsson749 From a pianist who adviced Rachmaninov to "Just press upon the keys until the blood oozes from your fingertips" I take nothing serious not even that ridiculous quote on Cortot. I was told Antoine was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company famous for Migraine and Violent Headaches syrupes and pills. 🤪🤪Happy new Year... Johnny.
Choosing to ignore everything he said and did because of one quote seems very silly and reductionistic to me. Regardless of what you think of him, he was one of the greatest pianists and musicians of the 19th century. Don’t forget that Rachmaninoff also said about him: "[His playing] gripped my whole imagination and had a marked influence on my ambition as a pianist."
And frankly, I don’t understand what’s so ridiculous about what he said to Cortot.
What quote? Ah! You mean what he said about Cortot. That's bullshit.. The advice he gave to Rachmaninov...that'sindeed silly bordering on moronic. And there is nothing you can do about it Shonnie.Happy New Year.
There have been many improvements in sound reproduction since 1947.
It's debatable whether music-making has improved to the same degree... I would say not - hence my willingness to listen in less-than-ideal sound to superlative pianism.
@@ThePianoFiles I couldn't agree more, and this recording is a great example. The ending of the final movement is just magical here. I wouldn't trade it for anything!
@@ThePianoFiles I know what you mean!
I was wondering what he was going to do with the first movement cadenza, but it somehow disappears. Sad, because the salvage edit is much worse than any mess he might have made when actually playing it - it sounds "post hoc". Perhaps an acetate side was lost?
It actually sounds to me like it wasn't played, not like an edit... but it's strange indeed. I haven't had an answer from any Cortot experts I've written to about why ...
Cortot is what I call a real pianist, as in the opposite of forteist. He understands the craft of musical communication. He clearly is singing through the piano just as Beethoven Liszt, and Chopin were said to have done, unlike the majority of pianoforte players today, who bang away on the keyboard with metronomic emphasis for the main purpose of showing they can do that . Who play this way to cover up the fact that they are unmusical.
He could not face France after the Second World War because of his liaison with the Vichy crowd. My teacher was his student during the later years in exile in Switzerland and I have first had account of what happened
Martha Argerich failed 2 notes playing this concerto in 2020. But it has been her best performance ever. If you want to play well this concerto, you cannot avoid to miss some notes.
These recordings of Cortot are, at the least, problematic. There are passages of sublime beauty - followed by stumbled runs and fistfuls of wrong notes - and it is not one of the 'difficult' concertos. To enjoy so many of Cortot's recordings you have to work hard to ignore the bum notes and just delight in the good bits. Piano lovers and admirers of Cortot (as I am) are prepared to overlook the sometimes grotesque moments.
I don't find this one problematic at all - unlike the late late Beethoven Sonata recordings he made for EMI, only very few of which were released and which can be uncomfortable. There's so much to glean from this particular performance I think, a phenomenally expansive approach. I am a huge fan too and wanted to appreciate those late late recordings but it's hard work at times... this one, fortunately, still has benefits that far outweigh the cons.
@@ThePianoFiles Yes, for a piano fanatic like myself and someone brought up on 78s of Cortot playing Chopin, the benefits in this performance do outweigh the cons. He was, of course, a superb chamber music player. I was told by a late great pianist who had studied in Paris, that when Cortot went on tour with Thibaud and Casals, he got on their nerves with his fussy and affected ways. So in one hotel in a small town in Europe (don't know which), after Cortot had gone to bed, the other two hung a TOILET sign on the door of his room. Next morning, he complained that he'd had the worst night of his life with people banging and kicking on this door the whole night through.
@@keybawd4023 that's HILARIOUS!!! What a fantastic story!!!
I'm always amazed with comments like this. Is this an exam in a third grade of a music school? Are we interested in Cortot's musical interpretation of this concerto or in his mechanical technique? Sure, it would be great to have both, but what is the point of talking about his errors 70+ years after the recording? Especially since the publisher has already mentioned that Cortot was not at the top of his shape at the moment of recording. But would we rather NOT listen to this wonderful, sensitive and poetic recording because of wrong notes here and there?
It is easy to find tons of recordings on the net made by hordes of pianists that would have all the notes right. But who the heck cares since these recordings are indistinguishable from each other?
You said it . I took lessons from astudent of Cortot . I'm no great musician but one can get an understanding of this man's musical personality from the many great recordings he left us . Like Schnabel he is musician first after the 40's but listen to his early 1919 Saint-Saens etude and one knows he had the panache of a Hofmann or Lhevinne when he needed it .
I was lucky to be a friend and a disciple of Robert Owens, who was one of the last Cortot's students.
After the end of WW2, Cortot's playing gained such an unbelievable sensitivity, which cannot be heard in his previous recordings, especially in his late recordings of Chopin.
Perfection in every note! I briefly studied with Robert Owens, Cortot's disciple, who discovered to me his principles of music making.
26:25 Russian composer, Boris Tchaikovsky, paraphrased this episode as his main theme for the movie "Balzaminov's Wedding" in 1966.