Alfred Cortot

To mark the 50th anniversary of the pianist’s death, EMI has brought out the largest and most comprehensive Cortot collection ever. The set offers nearly every commercial studio recording released under Cortot’s name on 78 shellac, vinyl LP, 45 rpm single, or compact disc, including unpublished takes already released on CD. To be sure, it is not quite “The Complete Cortot”. For example, the collection omits Cortot’s 1903 sessions accompanying soprano Felia Litvinne, plus a 1925 recording containing the second half only of Chopin’s First Ballade coupled on shellac with the same composer’s Second Impromptu. There is no broadcast material, either. However, we do get Cortot’s unpublished 1957 Chopin Preludes and Ballades, along with a few samples from the pianist’s long-rumored, unfinished Beethoven cycle recorded at the Ecole Normale in 1958/59

It’s a measure of the paucity of recordings of the Cortot-Thibaud-Casals trio – itself a direct result of their deliberately limited repertoire – that this latest release in Naxos’s series has only one performance by the Trio itself. This all-Beethoven affair presents the Archduke Trio, supported by Thibaud and Cortot’s Kreutzer and the only recording ever made by Casals and Cortot as a duo, the Mozart Variations.

Superior historical music making by three masters of the genre. The sound is clear but typical of its period. The transfers (from 78RPM recordings) are really amazing.

In 1905, three musical friends who would later become giants as soloists came together to form a piano trio. After their initial successes, they reserved time each year from their hectic individual careers to meet in London or Paris to play chamber music. Their musical relationship lasted another twenty-nine years, with the three playing together for the last time in 1934. Although their repertoire was relatively small (only thirty-three works were programmed by the trio during their entire existence), they left behind a handful of recordings, that, more than seventy years on, are still benchmarks, and continue to garner enough sales to keep them alive in the catalog.

Franco-Swiss pianist and conductor Alfred Cortot was one of the most popular 20th century musicians, renowned for his poetic insight into Romantic piano works, particularly those of Chopin and Schumann. This set of 7 CDs brings together a substantial number of Cortot's EMI recordings and features all the composers for whose music he showed a particular love and affinity.

Beethoven & Schubert: Piano Trios - Cortot, Thibaud, Casals
EMI | Great Recordings of the Century | 1999
EAC rip | ape (img + cue) | no log | 142 MB

Tresurable performances and one rejoices in their reissue…
Gramophone