Word: cortot
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Schumann situation is even worse. Kilenyi and Cortot slaughter the etudes symphoniques and Myra Hess distorts the Carnaval, while the toccata, Kreisleriana, and sonatas exist only in ancient and unavailable Victor sets. The other piano works are mostly unrecorded. Liszi and Franck are brutally manhandled by everyone but Petri and Horowitz. Here Louis Kentner typifies the wasted talent: known in America for a few excellent Mozart recordings, Kentner himself considers Liszi his piece do resistance...
...good time to indulge in a little crystal gazing about the Continent's younger artists, many of whom will attempt American tours during the next two or three years. Of the pianists in this category, perhaps the most important is Rumanian Dinn Lipatti, a former pupil of Cortot and Stravinsky, who is nearing thirty. Although he is a regular professor at the Conservatory of Geneva, Lipatti has been spreading his rapidly growing reputation by exhaustive tours of Europe. Already an excellent technician, his interpretation of Romantic and Modern music have often been hostilely received by critics. His Ravel, and even...
Item: Alfred Cortot, Minister of Music for the Vichy Government, was hissed off the stage in Paris this month but performs with great success in Switzerland...
Wagnerian Soprano Kirsten Flagstad came to grips with the postwar world in Paris. For her first big postwar concert outside Norway (where her husband died in prison, charged with collaboration), she was booked into the theater where ex-Vichyman Alfred Cortot had played the piano to mixed cheers and boos (TiME, Jan. 27). When Flagstad walked onstage, the crowd was silent a moment-then broke into applause. To more applause, and tumultuous cheers, she sang some Grieg songs, and excerpts from Wagner in German. Said Flagstad, heading for London: "My conscience is clear...
...Pianist Cortot, who had served Vichy as secretary for music and was forbidden to play for two years after the liberation, raised a noise by making his postwar debut. Cortot played the piano and the audience made the noise. The orchestra refused to accompany him, walked off stage. "Collaborationist!" yelled some of the audience. "Vive Cortot!" shouted others. Competing choruses of praise and damnation drowned out the music. Cortot grimly stuck to his keyboard, kept playing through the hubbub, finally won silence. At concert's end: an ovation...