Alfred Cortot plays Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1 'live' in 1947

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An April 13, 1947 concert performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.1 in C Major Op.15 with Alfred Cortot as soloist, accompanied by Victor Desarzens and the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne.

Cortot had a long career with the gramophone - four decades of solo and concerto recordings (although some discs accompanying singer Félia Litvinne predate the first of these by more than 15 years). However, in his many hours of recordings, he did not produce any commercially issued recordings of solo or concerted works of Beethoven (there is some chamber music put down in the 1920s), despite these being a major part of his repertoire for decades. He did record the complete Beethoven Sonatas in the late 1950s when he was around 80 years old, in two formats - as entire performances and as lecture-demonstrations in which he played excerpts while speaking about the work - but his technique had deteriorated so much by this point that his pianism was such a pale shadow of its previous glory, so these largely remained unreleased; only a few complete Sonatas and some lecture excerpts were released in 2012 in the 40-disc Anniversary Edition on EMI France, and while there are moments of beauty, his playing is unstable and not at the standard of the bulk of his sanctioned recordings.

When it comes to Beethoven's concertos, it is a great shame that Cortot recorded none of them as they were all in his repertoire for quite some time. In fact, Cortot recorded surprisingly little for piano and orchestra: despite a repertoire that included the complete Beethoven and Saint-Saens Concertos, and Rachmaninoff's Third, he only set down five works for piano and orchestra (the Schumann, Chopin F Minor, Saint-Saens 4th, Ravel Left-Hand, and Franck Symphonic Variations - the Franck and Schumann more than once).

However, we are fortunate that this 1947 broadcast was discovered and released (kudos to scholar Frederic Gaussin for his role here), as it is thus far the only concerto broadcast of Cortot playing a concerto that he had not already recorded in the studio. The recording was available only once on the relatively obscure label Tahra in 2007.

This concert took place not long after the French pianist moved to Switzerland from France, after having been banned from public performance for a year due to his association with the Vichy regime and his subsequent poor reception at his return performances in Paris (he had been booked to play the Schumann Concerto and the orchestra walked off stage when Cortot came on, and he played a solo concert instead).

Although Cortot was not at the peak of his powers at the time (he was approaching the age of 70), his precision had not waned to the extent that it would over the coming years, as referenced above. Despite just a few inaccuracies not significantly worse than some of what is heard in his discs from the previous decade (and one lapse in the last movement), there is much to enjoy in this remarkable performance. Cortot's distinctive singing sonority, magical pedal effects, soaring phrasing, and evocative timing are all in plain abundance. The interplay between left and right hands is as magnificent in this reading as it is in the pianist's celebrated Chopin and Schumann recordings, and his expansive rubato and sumptuous nuancing are wonderful complements to his robust accenting. There are also some interesting adjustments where he plays in a different register and adds some robust bass octaves at the beginning of orchestral tuttis. What is unclear is why he did not play the first movement cadenza.

A stunning performance and fascinating historical document of one of the most important pianists of the 20th century.