The Original Gramophone Review

Chopin 24 Preludes, Op 28

Alfred Cortot pf (Warner)

There can be little to be said at this time of day about Cortot’s playing of the twenty-four Preludes. His complete recording of them seven years ago has a place in gramophone history; the significance of this set is in what good piano recording of today has been able to do for it. It tells tremendously, of course, in such as Nos 8, 12, the middle part of No 15 (the ‘raindrops’), and No 19. Those, indeed, are the ones that most move me to marvel; No 8 can only be compared to lightning, or to a rapid, crystal-clear stream scintillating in the sun. There may be an occasional unevenness, and not all the sustained tone we might like; expressiveness may be sought by the holding back of the right hand after the left, or by spread chords, with rather palling frequency; but it yet remains to one of the young pianists of today to give us such level satisfaction throughout, or more brilliant highlights …

By the time I reached the Barcarolle all I can honestly say is that I felt exhausted. No doubt Chopin had a lot to answer for; and I think it was the Impromptus alone, not the Preludes, that were responsible. But I did feel that Cortot never allowed one any respite; kept one continually restless; and I certainly felt that of his Barcarolle, though, after a rest from Chopin, it would I think be a record one would eagerly desire. Cyril M Crabtree (3/34)

Rob Cowan Alfred Cortot made Chopin’s 24 Preludes, Op 28, sound like his biggest work, the reason being that in his hands the rests between the preludes are as musically compelling as the preludes themselves. There’s not a significant human emotion that Chopin passes on as irrelevant: all are there – passion, stoicism, fear and terror, anger, nobility or a simple embrace, all rubbing shoulders in less than 40 minutes. Some have raised their eyebrows at Cortot’s occasional stumbles between the piano keys, which to me sound like the fitful stammering of someone who is nervously bent on expressing their deepest confessions. And there’s Cortot’s very personal use of rubato – possibly better displayed here than elsewhere in his discography – which is inimitable. Once you latch on to the basics of Cortot’s way of playing, all else passes as irrelevant. Apart from two versions of the ‘Raindrop’ Prelude (No 15) in 1950 and 1952, Cortot recorded the Op 28 Preludes four times (in 1926, between 1933 and 1934, in 1942 and in 1957), but I think the 1933/34 set scores a bullseye in a way the others don’t quite.

Jeremy Nicholas Gosh, that’s quite an opening salvo, Rob! Cortot’s 1926 recording was the first complete Op 28 on disc. He’d been the first classical musician to make an issued electrical recording, in 1925 for Victor, and this was his first electrical recording for HMV. There are many delightful features in the 1926 session, with never slower and often faster tempos than in 1933/34 (though with a few more fluffs) – and better heard in the Naxos transfer than in the Warner box-set. Like you, I favour the 1933/34 version above all his others. And unknown to most, he recorded the complete set twice more in 1927 and 1928, at the Small Queen’s Hall and Kingsway Hall, London: neither was officially released, but various sides were used in reissues of the original DB957-60 set. It was Cortot and Ferruccio Busoni who were largely responsible for the concept of playing Op 28 as an intégral. Chopin would have been astonished at the idea, and it was unheard of before 1900. I personally am sceptical of hearing the whole lot in one go, but Cortot makes it seem the most natural thing in the world, helped not a little by Chopin’s key structure.

RC ‘Natural’ is the word, Jeremy, and apart from Chopin’s key structure there’s the dramaturgy of his writing. Let’s take just one sequence as an example, starting with No 14 in E flat minor, which recalls the windblown-midnight finale of the ‘Funeral March’ Sonata. Then we move on to the ‘Raindrop’ Prelude in D flat (No 15), marked Sostenuto, the ‘raindrop’ itself maybe falling after the storm’s blustery shower. In Cortot’s case there’s an interesting ‘fingerprint’ in that his more lavishly expressed 1926 recording of this prelude has the second section’s bass line incorporating some augmented bass arpeggios (from 3'22"), which he doesn’t do in the 1933/34 recording. Then there’s the lightning of the superfast Presto con fuoco in B flat minor (No 16) and the way the more comforting Allegretto in A flat (No 17) follows almost attacca (in Cortot’s hands, that is), waving any suggestion of inclement weather out of the picture. Chopin insisted that the 11 clock-like bass notes towards the end should be played without diminuendo, and Cortot obliges. I’m fascinated to read what you say about the later recordings from the 1920s. How I’d love to hear those. I get the feeling that you could have sat in on Cortot playing these pieces any number of times and they would always sound different.

JN Absolutely right, Rob, and in equally convincing performances. One only has to listen to the 1942 remake (is it?) or return visit (to his old lover?) to hear that. There are so many delicious things he does in 1942, and there are a few preludes I marginally prefer to the 1933/34 iteration (No 4 in E minor, for instance, is less prone to stressing how beautiful it is; No 13 in F sharp has a sublime serenity that is not there to the same degree in the earlier one; and the final page of No 24 in D minor provides a more sustained fiery conclusion). There’s one moment in the 1942 set that I don’t like, and that’s the final chord of the famous C minor Prelude (No 20), which Cortot plays sforzando. Alkan frequently does that to great effect (ppp > sfz) in his music, but it doesn’t work here.

RC Yes, there are differences that only really register when you’ve just inhabited one of the other recordings. And don’t forget there was horror in the air in France in 1942 that was impossible to ignore. Cortot recorded that set on December 2 in Studio Albert, Paris. In his booklet note for Warner’s 40-CD ‘Alfred Cortot Anniversary Edition’, François Anselmini writes, ‘There is no evidence that Cortot was actively anti-Semitic.’ Perhaps not. And yet, as was the case with people living amid the decaying stench of Auschwitz, knowledge of what had happened was all you needed. For me, Cortot’s most personal Chopin performance (of what is in turn Chopin’s most personal work) spell’s ‘awareness’ in every bar, right from the opening viola-like melody over a solemn accompaniment to the A minor Prelude (No 2). In 1933/34, the first note falls marginally off the beat – a common Cortot expressive ploy – but in 1942 it’s on the beat, almost. By contrast, the wartime Fourth Prelude (E minor) hasn’t the sense of troubled fantasy that distinguishes its predecessor. Urgency, yes; but fantasy, no.

JN Rob, for me the Mazurkas, rather than the Preludes, are Chopin’s most personal works (his autobiography, if you like), and I don’t hear in the 1942 rendition interpretations that are significantly different from the earlier ones, albeit they are played by a misguided, morally bankrupt, pro-Nazi Pétain poodle. (Life must go on, I know, but I still find it a strange decision to spend your time re-recording Chopin in the midst of a national nightmare.) Cortot was a musical mongrel: born in Switzerland, a French national and lover of all things German; and in none of these versions of the Preludes – nor, indeed, in anything Cortot recorded – do I hear a typical French pianist in the lightly skating vein of Camille Saint-Saëns, Louis Diémer, Raoul Pugno or Robert Lortat (who, incidentally, recorded a very fine, very different Op 28 in 1928). There’s a rhythmic freedom, rich depth of tone and (apparent) spontaneity that remains eternally fresh, which, supremely in the 1933/34 set, takes the listener on a journey they really don’t want to end.

RC True. But that journey is facilitated by generally good weather, whereas the 1942 set sings haplessly beneath oppressive dark skies which weigh heavily on the atmosphere. There’s no need to catalogue precisely what was going on at the time, people just need to be reminded that murder was in the air, which was not the case in 1933, nor indeed during the 1920s. Just listen to the lyrical simplicity of Prelude No 13 in F sharp in 1933/34, where Cortot opens the piece to a subtle crescendo; but in 1942 he keeps the music dynamically even. There are countless examples of blood-drained moments throughout the 1942 cycle – subtle, for sure, but, if you have the 1933/34 set as part of your musical mindset, telling. I’m not suggesting that wartime Cortot has the incendiary effect of certain wartime recordings by Wilhelm Furtwängler (a personal friend of the pianist), and while you disagree with my attribution of the Preludes as Chopin’s most personal work, the Mazurkas, although wonderful, don’t express quite the same level of confessional rawness.

JN Ah. Well, that is perhaps where we differ. As you say in your opening remarks, all human emotion is here, but I don’t see the Preludes overall as raw or confessional. And I see them as personal and autobiographical only in the sense that they are basically (pace the obvious candidates) not doom-laden and tragic but sunny and positive, which is what Chopin was at the time he wrote most of them (forget the flecks of blood in his sputum and the few preludes composed during the unhappy visit to Majorca). But I’m glad we agree about the 1933/34 recording. It is one of the glories of the gramophone and, in the words of this journal’s original reviewer ‘a record one would eagerly desire’. Like James Methuen-Campbell (and you, Rob!), I think Cortot’s Chopin ‘had an intuitive emotional depth that was lacking in most French pianists who preceded him, and the best of his discs [among which are these Preludes] make one believe that his playing is something near to Chopin’s own style … He aims at a deeper Chopin, a Chopin of sentiment but not sentimentality, of structural cohesion but not academic formality.’

This article originally appeared in the September 2024 issue of Gramophone. Whether you want to enjoy Gramophone online, explore our unique Reviews Database or our huge archive of issues stretching back to April 1923, or simply receive the magazine through your door every month, we've got the perfect subscription for you. Find out more at magsubscriptions.com