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The Art of Aldo Ciccolini · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Dissler, and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings. Although I'm a composer and pianist, first and foremost, I've also made
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  a lot of my living reviewing recordings, primarily those of piano music, for various magazines
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  and publications, most prominently for ClassicsToday.com and for Gramophone Magazine. I also host
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  the weekly piano radio program between the keys on the classical network and www.fm.org.
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  And when I'm with my pianist friends and with colleagues and music lovers, they often will
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  ask me just what I think about a certain pianist or a certain recording, or they want me to recommend
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  or recording of a specific piece of music, or someone might say, hey, I want to get a collection
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  with all of the Beethoven sonatas, or what cycle of Rachmaninoff concertos should I buy?
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  Who did the best Chopin etudes, you know, and so on and so forth? Which version should I look for?
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  Sometimes these questions can be easy to answer, but then other times I have to really think about
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  what I'm going to say before I answer, you know, being put on the spot. And, you know, when it comes
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  to the standard piano repertoire, there are so many choices, because more and more pianists are
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  recording the same works, and they continue to bring high standards of excellence to their
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  recordings. You know, performing standards are higher than ever, and there are more excellent
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  quality recordings available of classical music now that at any other time in history, I think.
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  And it's so hard for me to keep up with the sheer amount of piano releases coming out,
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  whether they are on CD or through download and streaming platforms. So the purpose of the Piano
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  Maven podcast is to make recommendations. Sometimes I'll talk about a new release, sometimes I will
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  discuss an unfamiliar recording of a familiar work that, you know, might deserve more attention
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  than it gets. And you can say that about so many recordings. I'm just looking on my shelf at the
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  many piano versions of Bach's Goldberg variations. I mean, that's a topic for many, many, many
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  episodes, but we'll be getting to the Goldbergs pretty soon, I'm sure. Sometimes I will revisit
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  an iconic recording that you should know about, that perhaps has been out for many decades,
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  yet somehow it doesn't get too much attention nowadays. Or I will devote an episode to a specific
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  pianist or maybe a specific record label. I'm going to try to keep these podcasts relatively
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  brief and to the point, at least for the time being. Although this first episode is going to be a
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  little bit longer than usual, because I'm going to be talking about the pianist Aldo Ciccolini,
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  and I'm going to be making 10 recommendations, not necessarily his 10 best recordings, but 10
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  recordings that are typical of his artistry and I think represent the range of what he has done on
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  record. Aldo Ciccolini lived from 1925 until 2015, and he was born in Naples, and he studied at that
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  city's conservatory as a child. He first came to international attention in 1949, when he won the
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  International Marguerite Long Jacques Thibault Competition in Paris. In addition to his long
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  concert and recording career, Aldo Ciccolini taught at the Paris Conservatory from 1970 until 1988.
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  He recorded prolifically from an early age. I think he started around 1950, and he kept going
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  until almost until his death. Although most music lovers associate Ciccolini with his groundbreaking
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  recordings of the music of Eric Satie, as well as a lot of unknown, at least unknown, as far as the
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  piano repertoire, French repertoire, the truth is that Ciccolini really played almost everything,
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  and his discography covers an amazingly eclectic scope of composers and styles. So for me to pick
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  Aldo Ciccolini's 10 best recordings or 10 most representative recordings is kind of a challenge,
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  because quite frankly we are spoiled for choice, but I'm going to talk about 10 releases that
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  I have enjoyed for years and years, and I keep coming back to these. And I think that these 10
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  releases all represent the essence of this marvelous pianist. What characterizes most of
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  Ciccolini's recordings, especially his earlier ones, is crisp articulation and a kind of surface
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  brilliance that is typical of the French school. And as Ciccolini got older, his style seemed to get
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  broader and fuller-bodied in terms of his sonority, and I would say even more emotionally generous,
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  perhaps. A good place to start, I think, our first selection is going to be a three-disc set on the
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  Cascaval label that contained the complete lyric pieces of Edvard Grieg, and these are beautifully
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  nuanced yet very direct performances. They are full of charm and deep feeling, and they also are
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  beautifully engineered. So that's my first Ciccolini recommendation, the Grieg lyric pieces.
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  My second recommendation is another recording that comes from late in Ciccolini's career.
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  It appeared on the L'Otto Volta label, and it contains the big Fantasia and the Sonata in C minor
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  of Mozart, Cursial Numbers 475 and 457. And when Mozart wrote in one of his letters about how
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  phrasing should flow like oil, I think he could have been describing Ciccolini's playing on this
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  recording. And by the way, I think these performances are superior to those that Ciccolini made earlier
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  in a complete Mozart Sonata cycle for a label called Discovery, and this cycle has been long
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  at a print, and it's not very easy to source, but this La Dolce Volta release is highly recommended.
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  My third Ciccolini recommendation is the cycle of the five concertos by Camille Saint-Saënt
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  that he recorded with Sergio Baudot conducting the Orchestra de Paris for the EMI label. And
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  basically this was the reference edition of choice if you wanted the Saint-Saënt concertos in
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  Stereo in the 1960s and early 70s. That was until they were replaced by EMI with those versions
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  with the pianist Jean-Philippe Collard and Andre Previn conducting. And since then we've had
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  Saint-Saënt cycles with better sound and better orchestral playing. But I have to say that the
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  pointed wit and the slightly dry sound that characterizes Ciccolini's interpretations
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  I think really befits the music, and he truly taps into the composer's aesthetic both musically
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  and pianistically. Recommendation number four, Ciccolini made a disc of piano music by Rossini,
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  and I think this is a really underrated and overlooked body of work. Rossini wrote tons and
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  tons of piano music after his retirement from the opera stage. And these pieces are so delightfully
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  melodic but there are a lot of surprising harmonic twists and turns, and they often are very
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  challenging to play. And I think that Ciccolini totally understands how to project Rossini's
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  surface charm and his elegance as well as his brashness. I think all these qualities really
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  come together. So definitely consider Ciccolini's Rossini recital recorded for EMI in the early
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  1970s. My fifth recommendation is music of Brahms. You know it's easy to think that a pianist who is
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  so adept in the French repertoire could be totally at sea when playing Brahms, but that is
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  absolutely not true about Aldo Ciccolini. I think his Brahms recordings have real clarity and transparency
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  plus a kind of melancholy lyricism that really works so well and is very reflected in this music.
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  Ciccolini recorded all of Brahms' Klavierstuk books, meaning the collections of piano pieces
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  encompassing Opus 76, Opus 116, 117, 118, and 119. These were all recorded for the EMI label. And
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  there was a time where you could get all of the Ciccolini Brahms recordings in a collection that
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  also contained Ciccolini's Schumann. I don't know if this is still easy to source, but you certainly
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  can find Ciccolini's EMI Brahms recordings in this huge box set that came out a few years ago with
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  his complete EMI recordings on 56 CDs. I really don't know if it's in print anymore, but certainly
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  in streaming platforms and via download you can get these Brahms recordings. They are
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  really worth hearing. And my sixth recommendation is Music of Franz List. Ciccolini recorded a lot
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  of lists, by the way, but one release that has always stood out to me is a 1970 recording that
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  contained the funerai, the Venezia Annapoli, and the two St. Francis legends. And I love the performances
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  of the legends especially. I think I once described them as big, colorful canvases painted in broad
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  brushstrokes. At least that's what I thought of Ciccolini's interpretation. Very, very different
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  from the equally wonderful, but quite different Wilhelm Kempf recordings from around 1950,
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  which I likened to subtle pastels rather than big, big oils. I heard Ciccolini play the legends in
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  a recital many years ago, and I will never forget how his sound just filled the room. Now, here's a
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  little sidebar. Ciccolini recorded List's harmony poétique et religieuse on two occasions for EMI,
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  both in 1968 and in 1990. But there is a live performance of this cycle from 2003 that has
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  been circulating in the piano world. I think it comes from a broadcast. I'm not 100% certain. You
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  can find it on YouTube. And my late friend Joe Patritch was the one who turned me on to this. He
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  said, you really have to hear this cycle. This is some of Ciccolini's best playing. And I agree,
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  if you can find these recordings, they're not commercially published, but they are so worth
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  hearing. I mean, this is really Ciccolini at his best. But those two legends with Ciccolini and List,
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  absolutely fantastic. Okay, recommendation number seven. Ciccolini championed a lot of French music
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  far and beyond the Impressionists. And he made a three disc survey of the piano music of Deodat de
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  Severac. And this was a composer who primarily wrote character pieces for piano. And they have a lot
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  of wit and charm, but there also are darker undercurrents. And Ciccolini pretty much pioneered
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  this repertoire on disc. And his De Severac cycle, I think, still remains a point of reference.
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  My eighth recommendation is a Scarlatti recital that was on EMI. And I really love Ciccolini's
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  way with Scarlatti. It's highly articulated, slightly dry. And I think it's kind of the
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  musical equivalent of Prosecco, if you know what I mean. For my ninth recommendation, I'm going to
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  turn to music of Chopin. Now, Ciccolini did not record an awful lot of Chopin, kind of surprisingly,
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  given that he recorded, you know, almost every other composer in existence. But I think that his
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  1970s recordings of the Chopin waltzes have marvelous virtuosity and elan and even a little bit of
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  edge to the surface charm. And they complement the more robust and lyrical Arthur Rubinstein
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  Chopin waltzes cycle, the one they did in stereo. So if you're looking for a recording of the Chopin
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  waltzes, you certainly won't be disappointed with Ciccolini. However, for my tenth Aldo Ciccolini
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  recommendation, and I know that you knew this was coming, we cannot discuss this pianist without
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  talking about his pioneering work on behalf of the music of Eric Satie. He recorded all of
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  Satie's piano music for the EMI label in the 1960s and early 1970s. And there was a big
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  Satie boom in the late 60s, probably because the composer being a kind of outlier and rebel,
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  and his determination to do his own thing and to buck the establishment resonated with the 1960s
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  zeitgeist. Now, Ciccolini re-recorded the Eric Satie piano music cycle in the early 80s, also for
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  EMI. I prefer some interpretations in the later cycle, but I find that the later cycle is not
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  recorded to my taste because the piano sounds a little brittle and glassy, which was kind of
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  typical of early digital productions of piano recordings that EMI was making in France.
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  Whereas his earlier cycle I think has much warmer sonics, and it's a little easier on the ear in
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  that regard. So that's the one that I recommend. So I hope that these 10 recommendations will
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  give you a good place to start if you are new to Aldo Ciccolini's artistry, and there's a lot of
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  wonderful and rewarding listening ahead for you. This is Jed Dissler. I look forward to being with
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  you next time on the Piano Maven podcast. Take care.