I'd think to sound like Cortot you'd have to know what Cortot knows, and think like Cortot. You'd be better off developing your own sound, and sounding like you - which might still come to knowing what Cortot and the others know, and getting feedback and guidance along the way.About Cortot in particular. A few years ago I joined in an activity where we'd each play a different composition by a given composer. I chose and "easy" piece that was short, repetitive, slow, and had simpler chords. Oddly enough, this was a piece that seemed never to be played by students. The difficulty in the piece was the fact that it was short, repetitive, slow, with a few simpler chords. it was hard to make it expressive. I found only three recordings, all played masterfully, each different. Cortot was one of them.All three pianists did something subtle with time, and that made the piece come alive. When I tried to do the same thing, I'd get "Your pulse has become erratic.", "I can't follow your pulse.", which was a mess. Otoh, if I went metronomic, the pulse was back, the energy pulse gives was back, but it was back to boring. I had to give up on trying to do more, time-wise.Recently I worked on a piece where I did manage to be expressive using time, but very subtly, in a slow and repetitive section of a piece. I knew more, and could also hear things that I couldn't hear back then. I may have been doing some of the things that Cortot did in that other piece. This is what I mean in my first paragraph.
........is it possible to have some recordings or interpretaions as beautiful as someone like Cortot or Sofronitsky if you dedicate the next 20 years to it?
For me, only if I play a tape recording of their music beside me while I pretend to play (think Tom and Jerry piano scene). At my rate I'll be 130 before I can even think of approaching this.
Topic: Is it possible to sound like Cortot/Sofronitsky/Hambourg 