Alfred Cortot

The master of the piano must surely be Frédéric Chopin. Every one of his compositions includes the piano in some form, yet within his oeuvre there is still an exciting variety of music to be found. Chopin made the solo piano form into an art, extensively developing various styles – including the piano sonata, waltz, polonaise and impromptu – and heavily popularising others for the first time, such as the Polish mazurka, the form he often chose to express his nationalism.

Vlado Perlemuter's association with the piano music of Ravel contributed considerably to his international celebrity - and yet at the same time it obscured the scope of an art that also resonated closely with the musical worlds of Chopin, Fauré, Debussy, and indeed with Schumann, Beethoven, Liszt and Mozart. The sobriety and reserve of Perlemuter's playing were often taken for coldness by a public that proved to be more sensitive to the flamboyance of an Alfred Cortot or a Samson François than to the poetry of an art made up of the tension of self-effacement before the ineffable quality of the work. However, his peers were not wrong, from Arthur Rubinstein to Yehudi Menuhin, from Dinu Lipatti to Henri Barda, from Pierre Boulez to Claudio Arrau.