This three-disc set from APR is both invaluable and provocative. For those who believe that pianists used to play with greater freedom and character, unimpeded by academic notions of correctness, this will be an Aladdin’s cave of treasures. Yet others who claim that the standard of performance has risen immeasurably over the years will also find ammunition. Wherever you stand on this, you here are reminded that the art of performance is in a constant state of flux. What was loved in the past becomes unacceptable today and vice versa.

Beginning with Saint-Saëns, APR’s apt curtain-raiser, we have a striking example of French facility. By his own admission Saint-Saëns composed ‘as an apple tree produces apples’, and his playing is no less inborn and effortless. His playing of his own Valse mignonne and Valse nonchalante are teasingly elegant and urbane. In Louis Diémer’s performance of Chopin’s D flat major Nocturne, Op 27 No 2, we are reminded that Chopin was long viewed as a salon figure, an excuse for sentimentality rather than sentiment. Raoul Pugno’s misreading of the rhythm at the start of the F sharp major Nocturne, Op 15 No 2, is an example of how easily freedom becomes distortion, compounded by a desolately slow tempo. Gaston Régis’s Tarantelle is another Chopin casualty, if for different reasons. Aptly presto, it lacks rhythmic focus and amounts to little more than a race against the clock. Then there is Francis Planté’s strained selection of Chopin’s Études: to describe these as ‘an astonishing achievement for a nonagenarian’ is affectionate, but it is also wishful thinking. There have been others, notably Rubinstein and Horszowski, who at a similar age and hardly in their prime still maintained something of their former magic.

More positively, there are pleasant surprises. There is grace from Gaston Régis in Saint-Saëns’s Menuet and Gavotte from his Suite, Op 90, while Lucien Wurmser’s performance of Mozart’s Pastorale variée is another example of playing as stylish as it is sparkling. All told, this is a voyage of discovery. The French jeu perlé style is very much to the fore, and I personally have always been grateful for the counterbalance provided by Cortot and Yvonne Lefébure. Marguerite Long described the French School as ‘lucid, precise and slender. If it concentrates above all on grace rather than force, preserving especially its equilibrium and sense of proportion, it does not bow to any other in its power, profundity and inner emotion.’ For years this view held sway, although a later generation of French pianists was more critical. In any case, on this beautifully presented set you can hear for yourself the foundations of Long’s statement.

APR’s set comes with an all-too-brief note on the French School and a lengthy and absorbing article on the provenance of these recordings, dating from 1904 to 1928. 

This review originally appeared in the SPRING 2025 issue of International Piano