Sunday June 06, 2010 at 1:52
3 notesThe other day I was listening to Alfred Cortot play the Franck Prelude Chorale & Fugue (from 1929, I think; my mother and father were 3) and I immediately posted to Twitter that I thought it was overwrought, the composition that is. I received some gentle feedback suggesting perhaps I was wrong in my estimation of the composition, and this led me to recall the first time I heard this composition, when I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old. It was Rubinstein who played it. I too tried to play it a few years later in some child’s pedagogy where it was watered down appropriately for my technique. The melody of the chorale theme has stayed with me all these years, vaguely, but I can’t recall whether I really liked it or not. (I liked everything Rubinstein did, so the answer is doubtless yes.) Listening to it now, however, I really felt it was much ado.
But it pays to give everything a chance and so I am revisiting it via Rubinstein, my original master. An excerpt is posted above. Rubinstein gives almost everything from the 19th century a coherency that is remarkable (and so much richer than a player such as Horowitz). If something is overwrought, he has the ability to wring it into something real. And I love him for that.
Here is the Cortot for comparison, which I continue to find inferior, but then I never much cared for Cortot anyway. (Maybe I should have considered that before judging Franck? Let’s not get too carried away.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPRRZwnq-6E
If you have any favorite recordings of the Franck, I would love to know about them and why.
This post was reblogged from Pianos + Players.
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