02. About 03. Archives 04. Photos ... Alfred Cortot Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 Spotlight customer reviews Customer Rating: Summary: Not hearing Cortot, you haven't really heard Chopin yet! Comment: Well, that may well be the case. Cortot had won open admiration of Schiff, Cziffra, Michelangeli, Arrau, Solti... just to name a few. His Chopin is so incisive, with myriad of hues from coming from his subtle touch. And the poignancy is such that it is pure poetic ecstasy all through. Needless to say, playing with this kind of concentration any artist has to take risk and the result is sheer beauty, beauty coming with a price: "the wrong notes". But at a time when spontaneity and improvisation was given so much weight, the price in view of the well captured beauty is very small. Some say Cortot (or even Rachmaninov) are dated. Somethings do change, but in art and in music, there are even more that will remain unchanged. Taste in music doesn't really change that much. And Cortot and Rachmaninov are right at the peak of modern pianism. They were ahead of their time in both music and pianism, and are still very much ahead ours in the sense that they still stand as our (Horowitz included) goal one way or other. I suggest what have really changed instead are the way younger pianists are trained and brought up nowadays, leaving few of them, if at all, in a position to carry on with the torch. And as Alfred Brendel said, the rich polyphonic pianistic tradition is really sadly lost. Coming back to this album, the real obstacle rather is the archive sound of their legacy, however rich they may be. But once this door is unlocked, viewers will be rewarded with a whole world of really wonderful music, of demonic and angelic pianism which would virtually leave Ashkenazy (or even Richter) way behind... | |
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