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The Art of Lelia Gousseau · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

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  This is Jed Disler and welcome to the Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide to piano
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  recordings. I had never heard of the French pianist Lélia Gousseau before the Mellow
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  Classic label issued a CD containing live recordings of the first piano concertos by
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  Liston Brahms and a radio studio recording of Gabriel Foret's Theme and Variations.
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  This label Mellow Classic has uncovered tons of archival recordings, mostly stemming from
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  France and Germany featuring pianists, string players, and conductors from famous artists
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  like Wilhelm Kempf and Walter Gieseking to names that even hardcore specialist collectors
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  might be familiar with, such as the pianist Lélia Gousseau. She was born in 1909 and
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  she studied as a teenager at the Paris Conservatory with Lazar Lévy. She had a pretty steady
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  and consistent concertizing career that was interrupted by World War II, but she started
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  again in the post-war years and she made a successful tour of the United States in 1952.
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  After performing with the Boston Symphony under Erich Leinsdorf, he wrote that she is
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  really a great pianist since Rudolf Sierken, I have not worked with a pianist with whom
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  I had such immediate and complete understanding. Lélia Gousseau also had a distinctive teaching
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  career at the National Conservatory and the École Normale in Paris, and she served on
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  numerous competition juries. She died in Paris on February 14, 1997 at the age of 88. Her
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  list Concerto No. 1, recorded in concert in November of 1953, features the Orchestre National
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  de la RTF, conducted by Pierre de Vaux. She's a listean to the manner born, technically
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  marvelous and with a rich, full-bodied sound, not bright and brittle. The orchestra is typical
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  of French orchestras of that time, in terms of the penetrating brass timbres and silvery
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  sounding strings, also the quick and characterful vibrato of the first-desc winds. That's also
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  true of the Brahms D minor Concerto on this disc, which dates from a January 1955 concert.
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  Unfortunately this is not as well engineered as the list, but you can tell that a serious
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  and fully engaged pianist is at work. She takes time to articulate a lot of the left-hand
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  melodies that often get buried with other pianists, and she allows herself tasteful
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  leeway in passages where the orchestra is not playing. Although it doesn't seem like
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  an overly fast performance just by listening to it, the total timing is actually about
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  45 and a half minutes, probably because you don't get a lot of the rhetorical stretching
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  out of phrases that are typical of performances that come closer to the 48, 49, 50 minute
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  plus mark. Surprisingly, perhaps, I find Lélia Gousseau to be kind of hard-toned and forthright
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  and rather charmless in the foray theme and variations. She brings impressive independence
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  of hands to the table, but the sound quality is a little straightened and possibly undermines
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  the feeling for color that we hear more in her list in Brahms. Also, the piano in the
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  foray recording is a little bit out of tune, which bothers me a tiny bit. Basically it's
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  kind of a square and not totally attractive performance. So on the whole, this is a disc
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  more for specialist piano mavens, and I suspect that I would return to it mainly for the Liszt
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  Concerto and for portions of the Brahms Concerto. This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening
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  to the Piano Maven podcast. Thanks for all your support, and I look forward to being
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  with you next time.