Condition: Excellent faint scuffs, tiny rim chip NAP , plays very quiet w faint crackle A GREAT COPY

The Preludes were recorded by Cortot no less thanthan four times between 1926 and 1934. They were made using Cortot’s preferred Pleyel piano, and were justly praised for their aural quality by contemporary critics. The piano sound is full and solid, with no lack of bass and very little compromise in treble definition. Take the dynamic definition in Op.28 nr.15 in D flat (1926), whose extended arch builds to an impressive fortissimo with all threatening rumblings and eloquently repeated notes taking the listener on a journey which, once started, can bear no interruption. It is fascinating to compare the early version with the 1950 recording, which has a more ringing quality and a slightly greater sense of acoustic, but which otherwise shows little advance in recording quality, or indeed change in Cortot’s interpretation.

There are some messy moments on these recordings, and commentators have often noted the technical inaccuracies in Cortot’s recordings. Made in the days before high definition sound and sophisticated tape editing, it is well to remember that these are more like snapshots of performances, rather than the polished, extended and oft-chewed sessions of the dedicated recording artist. The image, mood and message of the music was the important thing, and to my mind Cortot’s poetic approach to playing Chopin brings us close to Chopin’s poetic approach while writing. Modern pianists will be interested in the transparency and parlando qualities that Cortot can create in his Chopin. Older instruments often have this quality over their more powerful present day concert grand pianos, whose makers, striving for ever more enduring qualities of sustain, can throw the balance away from the more intimate qualities of true pianissimo or the kind of bass sound that Chopin would have had in mind when composing.

Cortot is in some ways the forerunner of modern attitudes toward pianism. His interpretations will not seem unfamiliar to most people today. He avoids extravagances of display or artifice, never going beyond the service of the true musician to the text and intention of the music. This is not to say that his interpretations are foursquare or in any way dull or predictable. Listening to the Impromptus, there is an irrepressible sense of fun in the recapitulation of No.1 which is priceless. The sense of being given a unique musical gift permeates the whole set – the playing is self-narrating in a way which I miss so often in modern performances.

Alfred Denis Cortot (Nyon, Switzerland September 26, 1877 – Lausanne June 15, 1962) was a Swiss pianist and conductor. He is one of the most popular 20th century musicians, especially renowned for his poetic insight in Romantic period piano works, particularly those of Chopin and Schumann.

Early life and education
Born in Nyon in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, Cortot studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Emile Descombes (reputedly a pupil of Chopin) (as did Maurice Ravel), and with Louis Diémer, taking a premier prix in 1896. He made his debut at the Concerts Colonne in 1897, playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. Between 1898 and 1901 he was a choral coach, and subsequently assistant conductor, at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, and in 1902 he conducted the Paris premiere of Götterdämmerung by Wagner. He formed a concert society to perform Wagner's Parsifal, Beethoven's Missa solemnis, Brahms' German Requiem, and new works by French composers.

[edit] Career
In 1905, Cortot formed a trio with Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals, which established itself as the leading piano trio of its era, and probably of any era. From 1907 to 1923 Cortot taught at the Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included Clara Haskil, Dinu Lipatti, Vlado Perlemuter, and even Marguerite Monnot, French composer of most of the best songs of Edith Piaf and of the 1956 stage musical Irma la Douce. In 1919 he founded the École Normale de Musique de Paris. His courses in musical interpretation were legendary. Extremely widely traveled as a pianist, he also appeared as guest conductor of many orchestras. He died in Lausanne.

[edit] World War II
Controversially, he supported the German occupation in France during the Second World War (he played in Nazi-sponsored concerts, for example), serving as Minister of Culture for the Vichy regime, and befriending Hitler's friend, architect, and (after 1942) Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer[citation needed]. His Vichy connections, in particular, led to him being declared persona non grata after the Liberation. The motives for his wartime activities have been disputed; they may have arisen from nothing more than his lifelong championship of Teutonic musical culture. Moreover his wife, Clothilde Breal, daughter of the linguist, Michel Breal, was of Jewish origin and Clothilde Breal's cousin, Lise Bloch, was married to Leon Blum, the first Jew to become President du Conseil or Prime Minister in France. Cortot and the Blums maintained a close friendship. At any rate, he was banned from performing publicly for a year[citation needed], and his public image in France suffered greatly (though he continued to be well received as a recitalist in other countries, notably Italy and England).

[edit] Contribution
As the foremost piano interpreter of Chopin and Schumann, Cortot made editions of both those composers' music, which were notable for his own meticulous commentary on technical problems and matters of interpretation. He had famous memory lapses - particularly notable from the 1940s onwards, when non-musical matters were very much on his mind - and occasionally left wrong notes on his records. This was in stark contrast to his technically flawless student, Lipatti. However, when Cortot was in form, he showed a brilliant technique which could handle almost any kind of pianistic firework, as evidenced in his legendary recordings of Liszt's Sonata in B minor and Saint-Saens' Etude en Forme de Valse.

Cortot was also the author of the piano exercise book: "Rational Principles of Pianoforte Technique". This book contains many finger exercises to aid in the development of various aspects of piano playing technique. It was originally written in French but has since been translated into other languages.

Technical flaws notwithstanding, Cortot was among the very greatest musicians of the century, and represented the end of an era. He is considered the last exponent of a personal, subjective style that deprecated precise technique in favour of intuition, interpretation and authentic spirit. This approach was replaced by the modern "scientific" way of playing, which places logic and precision at the forefront and equates authenticity with metronomic and literal "interpretations".[citation needed] Cortot's recordings and musical annotations have seldom been out of print.

In his early years (approx. 1920-1930 period) Cortot recorded a number of piano rolls for the Aeolian/ Duo Art company, since 78rpm disks were not always satisfactory in quality or maximum duration of the recording. Once he performed a Liszt Rhapsody weaving his own playing live at the piano with its mechanical reproduction. With eyes closed some critics could not distinguish between the two. In later years Cortot of course switched to disk technology and he recorded right up to 1957, only 5 years before his death. By then he made errors even more often, but retained his special phrasing and the free, romantical performances he was famous for.