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The Chopin Etudes on Record · 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.
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And this is episode number 20.
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So I thought I would do something really special and quite extensive.
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Some composers' styles develop over time, a long period of time or a relative short
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period of time.
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But there are other composers that reveal their genius almost right from the start.
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And one of those I would consider to be Frédéric Chopin.
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When the 21-year-old Chopin left Warsaw for Paris, he quickly established his position
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as an innovative force in music as both pianist and composer.
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He was one who cultivated refinement, integrity, and a kind of classical streak that set him
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apart from his romantic era colleagues.
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His pianistic style, both as a pianist and as a composer, raised the proverbial bar for
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ingenuity.
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And he created a world in which unprecedented keyboard sonorities, figurations, and modulatory
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patterns intermingle to often startling effect.
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So as such, in order to play Chopin's compositions well or even play them at all, one had to
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reach beyond the standard studies, exercises, and method books of that era.
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Back in Chopin's day and even before Chopin's day, most piano etudes, and etude is a piece
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designed specifically to improve technical mastery, most piano etudes were basically
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didactic in nature and often without a whole lot of musical substance.
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But that really changed with Chopin's two sets of etudes, Opus 10 and Opus 25, which
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remain the cornerstones of romantic piano technique.
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Each of these 24 etudes focuses upon a specific technical challenge and they give the pianist
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very little respite and a multitude of musical considerations to consider and absorb.
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The Chopin etudes have attracted as well as humbled many generations of even the most
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exceptional pianists.
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List is practicing my etudes, Chopin wrote to Stephen Heller.
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He wrote that List is transporting me outside of my respectable thoughts.
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I should like to steal from him the way to play my own etudes.
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I think that's such a wonderful quote.
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When Alexander Greiner, who was the manager of Steinway and Sons Concert and Artist Department,
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asked the great virtuoso Joseph Hoffman if he could play all of the Chopin etudes that
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he really wanted to hear Hoffman play all the etudes for him, Hoffman basically declined
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and he said that there is no pianist and there never will be a pianist who can play all of
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the Chopin etudes equally well.
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However, that has not stopped pianists from recording all of the Chopin etudes.
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So when the question comes up as to which complete cycle of Chopin etudes by one particular
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pianist I should recommend, well I actually do have a recommendation, but I thought that
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since the Chopin etudes are so central to the repertoire and so iconic that we really
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should look at more than one pianist.
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I've picked 15 recordings of the Chopin etudes and the 15 pianists I'm discussing have recorded
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both books of etudes, Opus 10 and Opus 25, and all of these recordings are pretty much
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for the most part consistently satisfying in terms of how these pianists realize their
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conceptions.
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Back in 2023 I wrote an article for Gramophone where I discussed 20 or so versions of the
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Chopin etudes on disk, and you can find a link to this article in the podcast information.
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I should mention that these pianists who've recorded both the Opus 10 and Opus 15 books
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of etudes have not necessarily recorded Chopin's three Nouvelle etudes in addition, which are
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beautiful pieces, but I'm not going to include the three Nouvelle etudes as part of this
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talk.
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So for my first pianist on this 15 pianist shortlist, we have to go back to 1933 and
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1934 and a Chopin etude cycle that continues to make strong impressions on listeners for
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its poetry and for its daring and imagination, and the pianist is, as some of you may already
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have guessed, is pianist Alfred Courtauld.
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He lived from 1877 to 1962.
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Now Courtauld never was an infallible technician and there are little stumbles and wrong notes
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throughout his Chopin etudes recordings, and these wrong notes still bother certain listeners
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and pundits, maybe understandably so, but to my mind, these mistakes really don't matter
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at all.
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And besides, there are certain etudes where Courtauld is absolutely at the top of his
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technical game, and he always seems to hit upon the perfect tempo.
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He never drags the slower lyrical etudes, and he also has a fantastic way of projecting
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melodies so that they soar, and he always conveys a state of ecstasy, and you listen
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to his etude performances again and again, and you always hear new details, and you know,
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wrong notes.
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Who really cares?
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I certainly don't when it comes to Courtauld.
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And by the way, Courtauld re-recorded the etudes in 1942, and those performances also
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have been reissued, but they are not generally as strong as the 1933-34 versions, which have
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been reissued a gazillion times on CD, by the way, and I'm sure you can find them on
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YouTube for free.
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Next, we fast forward to the 1950s, and something completely different.
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We have a cycle of Chopin etudes from a pianist that perhaps you would not have expected to
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record all of them, Paul Baudoura Scoda, but he actually made an excellent performing edition
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of the Chopin etudes.
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Now, he was a pianist whose orientation was basically in the Austro-German repertoire.
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He recorded the Mozart and Beethoven and Schubert sonata cycles several times over on a modern
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piano as well as on period instruments, and he would often record and re-record and re-re-re-re-re-record
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the same pieces over and over again.
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I think he has maybe 10,000 versions of the Schubert B-flat posthumous sonata out there.
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His discography is huge, and it's a huge mess trying to sort it out.
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I pity the prospective Paul Baudoura Scoda discographer.
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The point is that he played a much wider range of repertoire than you would suspect, and
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among the many discs that he made for the Westminster label in the 1950s was the Chopin
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etudes.
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They aren't the flashiest Chopin etudes on the block, but there's a lot of colour and
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nuance and sensitivity.
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Someone once suggested to me that there was an edit in every other bar that Baudoura Scoda
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could not have possibly played all these etudes straight through.
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But whether that's true or not, there does happen to be a live opus 25 etudes performance
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with Paul Baudoura Scoda from, I guess it's from around 1965.
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And he's technically fantastic.
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He just nails the pieces to the wall.
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Also from the 1950s, the American pianist Ruth Slenzinska, who turned 99 this year,
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she recorded the etudes in the 50s for the American Deka label.
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And a few years ago, Australian eloquence brought out a wonderful box set, restoring
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all of Ruth Slenzinska's American Deka recordings.
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Sometimes I find her slower, more lyrical pieces a little lacking in tension and harmonic
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awareness, but other selections really stand out.
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For example, the C major, Opus 10 number one's right hand arpeggios have a real glittering
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force to them and a strong left hand underpinning.
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And the F minor, Opus 10 number nine, takes on this intriguingly dark and brooding character.
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It's slower than usual and it's quite a fascinating performance.
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It is a really first rate cycle.
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She re-recorded the etudes, by the way, for Musical Heritage Society in the mid 1970s.
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These are also worth checking out, especially the Opus 10 remakes.
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Opus 25 is not quite so consistent in the later version.
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Now I'm going to talk about two artists who were among the major pianists of their generation.
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And both of these pianists recorded the Chopin etudes twice.
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The first was Vladimir Ashkenazi.
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He recorded them in Russia, I think in the late 50s or early 1960s.
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I can't quite remember.
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But he was in his early 20s.
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And he recorded them again for Deka in the mid 1970s.
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And the later versions are heavier maybe in some ways, but they're subtle and refined
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and maybe less impetuous.
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But I find his first cycle of etudes for melodia more spontaneous and fresher and more supple.
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And there are certain etudes that no one has played better since, like the A minor, Opus
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25, number four, that I think is kind of a precursor to stride piano.
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And Ashkenazi's tempo is just inhumanly fast, yet it is controlled beyond belief.
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The second of these two pianists is Maurizio Paulini.
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I know some critics who find his early 1970s recording for Deutsche Grammophon of the etudes
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cold or overly literal.
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I really don't hear that at all.
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I find that the playing has a lot of character and refinement.
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And technically they are absolutely impeccable.
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But what's interesting is that when Paulini was 18, right after he won the Chopin competition
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in Warsaw, he recorded the etudes for the EMI label, but then he would not allow their
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release.
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But in 2010, the Testament label brought out this etude cycle I guess Paulini had relented.
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And they are just as technically wonderful as the Deutsche Grammophon versions, but they
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are a little fresher and more spontaneous.
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That's what I said about the earlier Ashkenazi etudes.
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And I think the same goes for Paulini.
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I think had EMI issued these performances when they were recorded, had Paulini approved
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of them, I think they would have been the version of reference for a modern stereo edition
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of the Chopin etudes.
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The American pianist John Browning was a fellow classmate of Van Clyburn's at Juilliard in
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the early 1950s.
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He studied with Rosina Levine just as Clyburn did.
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And some say that he and Clyburn had a friendly rivalry or maybe it wasn't so friendly.
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But I like John Browning's Chopin etudes.
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I like his direct, emotionally uncluttered, sometimes hard-toned, but not insensitive
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interpretations.
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I think they've held up very well.
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And there's also a subtle flexibility that deserves to be noted.
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You have to really listen to it to pick that up.
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I have always liked the Chopin etudes by the American pianist Abbie Simon.
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He lived from 1920 until 2019.
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He died just a few weeks short of his 100th birthday.
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His etudes retain some of the old school traits rooted in his training.
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He studied with David Saperton at the Curtis Institute, and Saperton in turn was Leopold
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Godofsky's son-in-law.
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And Abbie Simon does things like, for instance, he will often relax the melodic line in order
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to underscore a cadence or to navigate a transition.
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And he does all kinds of shifts in voicing and dynamics that create interesting textural
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effects, such as the inner voices he brings out in the Opus 10 No. 2 etudes accompaniment,
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or he will bring out countermelodies in the F major Opus 10 No. 8.
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This was an etude that Vladimir Horowitz recorded.
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And like Horowitz, Abbie Simon plays that etude's last four chords quietly with a diminuendo,
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rather than adhering to Chopin's forte marking.
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This was kind of an unwritten tradition, and romantic-era pianists used to call this kind
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of effect a reverse accent.
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I would say that Abbie Simon is half romantic and half modern, but he is so very authentically,
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and you never feel that his romanticisms are at all contrived or forced or imposed from
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without, which can often be the case with some of today's young pianists, and we will
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address that shortly.
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However, Abbie Simon's liberties sound positively puritanical when measured alongside Georges
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Chiffre, whose textual transgressions in his totally freewheeling style give new meaning
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to the word demented.
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These are the most insane Chopin etudes ever recorded.
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I'm going to read to you what I wrote about Chiffre's etudes in Gramophone, because I
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don't think I can improve on my description.
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So let me read this.
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I said that the Hungarian pianist gooses up fortes and pushes crescendos to the brink.
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He fills out octaves with chords.
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He sweeps through arpeggios like a rollercoaster operator on LSD.
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He transforms opus 25, number six's eloquent accompaniment into a cha-cha, and he suffuses
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opus 25's last three selections with a flamboyance that might have made Franz Liszt gasp.
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Chiffre's wild, unfettered impact can overwhelm you and even exhaust you, yet what saves the
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day is his joyful comportment.
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In all, Chiffre's etudes amount to a circus starring a master acrobat executing a highwire
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act without a safety net.
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I have to admit that Chiffre's Chopin etudes are one of my great guilty pleasures.
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I have so much fun listening to them.
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Let's move to the 1980s and specifically to 1981 and the late, great Uruguayan pianist
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Dinora Varsi's recording of the Chopin etudes.
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I don't remember which label it first appeared on.
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I know it was once available on CD on the interchord label, and then it appeared in
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this humongous 35 CD box set called the Dinora Varsi Legacy.
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It was on the genuine label, and of course it's out of print, but you can download or
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stream Dinora Varsi Chopin etudes.
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This is intelligent virtuosity on many, many levels, and again, it's virtuosity at the
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service of music.
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These are absolutely excellent first rate performances, well worth checking out.
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I want to also talk about a pianist who also died tragically young, Tatiana Shebanova,
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and on the Polish Ducks label she recorded brilliant and scintillating and totally musical
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renditions of the etudes that I put on par with Dinora Varsi.
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I can also say the same for the Japanese pianist Yuki Matsuzawa.
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I know you haven't heard of her, but she has an absolutely world class first rate edition
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of the Chopin etudes.
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Her recordings of the etudes, by the way, were used in part for that infamous Joyce
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Hattow recording of the Chopin etudes.
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Remember when all of these CDs were coming out on a label called Concert Artist, all
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credited to pianist Joyce Hattow, and it turned out that all of these recordings were stolen
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from other pianists' recordings.
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I helped to uncover that scandal, by the way.
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My friend Donald Manildi singled out Yuki Matsuzawa's Chopin etudes for praise.
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In a very detailed and extensive survey he wrote on recordings of the Chopin etudes for
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International Piano Quarterly magazine in the late 1990s.
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All I can say about Yuki Matsuzawa's Chopin etudes is what's not to love.
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You have perfect finger work, you have fluent phrasing, you have impeccable timing, imaginative
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pedaling, and very discreetly novel voicings.
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There are no dead spots in her performances whatsoever.
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No miscalculation of tempos, and no expressive weirdness or ticks.
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You can purchase Matsuzawa's Chopin etudes as reasonably priced MP3 downloads, but if
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you want to find the physical disc, you'll have to pay a pretty penny.
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And I would be remiss if I did not mention Murray Pariah.
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His Chopin etudes are really marvelous.
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This is bold and colorful and totally assured and consistently characterful playing.
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It's very true to the text as well, and his etudes are gorgeously recorded.
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I can't recommend them more highly.
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Now one of the most recent Chopin etudes versions out there comes from Yu-chan Lim, who famously
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won the 2022 Van Clyburn competition when he was 18 years old.
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He made the best live recording ever of Liszt's Transcendental etudes.
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These came from his semifinal round at the Clyburn.
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Some of my critic colleagues bent over backwards praising Yu-chan Lim's recent DECA recording
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of the Chopin etudes.
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And I can understand their enthusiasm because technically these pieces hold absolutely no
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difficulties for Yu-chan Lim, and his technique is as supple and as effortless as you can
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imagine.
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Musically speaking, however, I tend to find his Chopin more interventionist and capricious
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than Liszt.
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For example, he loves to futz around with inner voices and he loves attention-getting
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accents.
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He likes to alter dynamics for momentary effect.
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And he does these cutesy little sudden changes of balance between the hands just because he
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can do it.
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I mean, the pianism is absolutely amazing, but I wonder if these expressive gestures
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that now sound like momentary inspirations and felicities are going to hold up over time.
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Will they eventually sound more contrived or predictable over repeated hearings?
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That's why I hedged my bet when I reviewed this recording recently.
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By contrast, Alfred Courtauld's spontaneous phrasings and very personal roboto always
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sounds fresh, and Schifra's craziness is a law unto itself.
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But while I find Yu-chan Lim's Liszt etudes musically sincere, I'm not 100% sure about
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his Chopin, brilliant as it is on many levels.
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However, if I had to choose only one recording of the Chopin etudes from my collection, only
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one, it would be by the Cuban-born American pianist Juana Zayas.
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And her 1983 recording that's available on the music and arts label, I think is incredibly
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special.
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And again, it was Donald Menilde who brought this release to my attention many years ago
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in that Chopin etudes survey that I mentioned before.
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He wrote that Juana Zayas lavishes on all 24 pieces a quite fabulous amalgam of lyricism,
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wit drama, and sheer pianistic craft.
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I could not agree more.
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And she brings out each etude's specific character with a sense of variety that never spills
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over into willfulness or eccentricity.
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And she's another pianist who channels considerable technique always toward musical ends.
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I consider her 1983 recording of the Chopin etudes to be an ideal marriage of musicianship
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and virtuosity.
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This is Jed Disler, and you have been listening to the Piano Maven podcast.
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And I wish you happy listening in your pursuit of the Chopin etudes on disc.
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And I hope you'll consider my recommendations.
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I look forward to us being together for our next episode.
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So be well and stay safe.
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And please let your Piano Maven friends know about this podcast.