Alfred Cortot

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

Born in Nyon in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, Cortot studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Emile Decombes (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 Festspiele, 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.

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 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 pisnist, he also appeared as guest conductor of many orchestras. He died in Lausanne.

Controversially, he supported the German occupation in France during the Second World War (he played in Nazi-sponsored concerts, for example), and this led to him being declared persona non grata after the end of the war. His motivations for doing this have been disputed, but he was banned from performing publicly for a year, and his public image in France suffered greatly (though he continued to be well received as a recitalist in other countries, notably England).

As a pianist, Cortot was particularly noted for his interpretations of Chopin and Schumann, and he made editions of both those composers' music, editions notable for his own meticulous commentary on technical problems and matters of interpretation. Many connoisseurs consider him to be the greatest interpreter of either composer that there has ever been. 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, as did other celebrated pianists of his time (e.g. Edwin Fischer, Artur Schnabel, and Percy Grainger). This was in stark contrast to his technically flawless student, Lipatti.

His 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 favor 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". Cortot's recordings are highly valuable documents, and have seldom been out of print.

Bibliography

Cortot, Alfred, La musique française de piano, 1930–48
—, Cours d’interprétation, 1934 (Studies in Musical Interpretation, 1937)
—, Aspects de Chopin, 1949 (In Search of Chopin, 1951)
Gavoty, Bernard Alfred Cortot, 1977 (French)
Manshardt, Thomas, Aspects of Cortot, 1994

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