Cortot's masterclass cds

[kempff1234]

I just got the cds. Does anyones else havet hem? if yes, what do you think? Are they worth the money?

[mikey6]

I've got a copy (without translation which is rather annoying) - good to hear him in something different, don't think he recorded any Beethoven.

[kempff1234]

I've got a copy (without translation which is rather annoying) - good to hear him in something different, don't think he recorded any Beethoven.

Wrong notes and all aside, these cds are gems. Great window into a lost era

[mikebechstein]

I love these CDs. I like the fact that, like his playing, technique and digital ability are, to him, only as a means to an end and it seems to be ONLY the music that matters. Yes, too many wrong notes can be annoying but he is so unbothered by them that he loses all his musical inhibitions and just plays like a god (a god with a flawed technique.)

His idea of a masterclass seems to assume that the notes are known and the physical technique (which is different for each pianist anyway) is up to the pianist. It is a study in music projection through a poetic lens and as people imagine the same scene differently or play the same ideas but with different techniques then the results are always different for each pianist. (Which is as it should be.) His sense of what the music is saying is absolutely beautiful (from the translation) and the best thing is that you don’t have to have a fabulous technique to gain a new insight into the pieces he plays on the CDs. It has helped me, with my very basic and mediocre technique, to find new ways of expressing myself at the keyboard which, I suppose, was his intention.

I have a video clip of him somewhere and he is giving a masterclass on the “The Poet Speaks” from Kinderszenen and he talks over the last few bars saying that as the sonorities die away (and I am paraphrasing from memory here) “you are left with only the memory of a dream which haunts you still”.

Perfection (IMO)