The Earliest French Piano Recordings
rec. 1903-28
APR 7318 [3 CDs: 239]
APR’s release is the latest in its ‘The French Piano School’ series and draws together some of the rarest piano recordings ever made in an essential three-CD set lasting a minute short of four hours. That said, the company is revisiting a number of recordings in its earlier ‘Piano G & T’ series – specifically volumes 2, 3 and 4 which contained the recordings of the French artists who recorded for that company: Raoul Pugno, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Louis Diémer (review ~ review). However, these are not simple reissues. In a large number of cases restoration engineer Andrew Hallifax has carried out pitch stabilization, essential not least in the case of Saint-Saëns’ and Pugno’s recordings, as well as further sensitive enhancement. This means that they can be profitably compared and contrasted with Marston’s restorations in its ‘Legendary Piano Recordings’ release (review) which focused on the three artists already mentioned, as well as Grieg – not in this APR release for obvious reasons – Massenet and Debussy, heard in piano accompanying roles, as well as Pugno. Marston too employed pitch stabilization, something that has long been needed to deal with the Parisian turntable of 1903-04 whose unstable speeds played havoc with a number of these recordings and, because of endemic wow, made them a trial to listen to.
The first disc is given over to Saint-Saëns – though the four sides where he accompanied Meyrianne Héglon, are not included – Louis Diémer and Vincent d’Indy. The second CD covers Pugno’s recordings and doesn’t include, as Marston does, his own Page d’amour, sung by Maria Gay, as it’s not certain that he is accompanying. It also includes the complete recordings of Aimée-Marie Roger-Miclos and the exceptionally rare 1921 sides made in Algeria by Gaston Régis. CD 3 includes all Francis Planté’s 1928 sides and a selection taken from Lucien Wurmser – eight Gramophone Company sides of 1911.
Given that I have reviewed many of these recordings before, there’s seems no point reinventing the wheel so I’ll reheat what I had to say and will augment the text with some comments about the other artists to be found here, as well as making a few points as to the nature of the remasterings.
“Saint-Saëns was a finger technician of the utmost clarity and brilliance. The verve and dynamism of his playing is spellbinding and scintillating. Thus, Saint-Saëns’s Valse mignonne – especially the 1904 recording; he remade it in 1919 – is a vivid example of his nonchalant brilliance and colouristic palette. The varnish and command of the excerpts from his own Second Concerto – important pointers toward authorial projection, naturally – vie with the truncated Rhapsodie d’Auvergne for executant scintillation. The sense of energy and brio is palpable in all his sides. He’s a veritable genius of the keyboard and even in the lightest of these essentially light selections his allure is visceral. Violinist Gabriel Willaume plays with Gallic sensibility – an essentially vibrato-pure performer without undue mannerisms.
Louis Diémer plays two of his own sweetmeats twice over, the first time in 1904 and again two years later, but was better known as an executant. The sides here were made when he was in his very early sixties. His own Chant du Nautonier is a rather meretricious etude-like affair but is played with the same kind of brilliance that informs the musicianship of his disc mates. His Godard is vivacious though his Chopin is rather reserved and over-fleet of finger.
Pugno’s thirteen discs come from Parisian sessions in April and November 1903. Multifaceted and multi-talented Pugno was variously pianist, organist, accompanist and composer but didn’t specialize as a pianist until he was forty. You will be rewarded with some remarkable pianism from the sonata partner of Ysaÿe and the man who encouraged Grieg to record. His tempo in the Chopin Waltz Op 34/1 is conventional, the playing excellent but it is his famous recording of the F Sharp Nocturne that will pull you up short. He claimed the excessively slow tempo was from Georges Mathias, his piano teacher and one of Chopin’s best students. Exceptional grace animates the Mendelssohn Song without words and Massenet’s Valse folle is driven through with passion, the ritardandos stylish and playful. Incision, clarity of fingerwork and superb touch distinguish the Chabrier and superb voicings do likewise with the Chopin A Flat Impromptu. His delicacy and sensitivity to dynamics are clear in the D Flat Berceuse and in fact everywhere the superiority of his imagination and pianism is evident.
Aimée Marie Roger-Miclos was born in 1860 and hers was a major career and she took on big concertos as well as championing chamber and solo music. It’s of the highest interest to hear the metrical freedom, and the intelligent caprice of her phrasing of the Chopin Waltzes, especially Op. 64 No. 1. Rubati are extremely pronounced but imagination is the key and the clarity and colour of her playing pays testament to her teaching and to well-established French traditions. Her Godard is intoxicatingly personalised whilst the desynchronised hands are perhaps most evident in the second of the waltzes she essays, Op.64 No.2. Her Mendelssohn remains warmly textured and tonally unexaggerated whilst the extracts from the two Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies indicate the more venturesome capacities she possessed. These Fonotipias are in excellent shape and sound very well – none of that Paris turntable instability that afflicted so many other sessions for the French branch of G&T.”
Neither APR nor Marston has previously reissued d’Indy’s two 78s made at HMV’s Hayes studios in June 1923. He selected four of his Tableaux de voyage, Op.33 and whilst none requires a virtuoso technique they do require sharp characterisation. The flashiest is No.9 Départ matinal which he plays with a certain insouciance. He also plays his Danses rythmiques, the second of his Poème des Montagnes, Op.15. Gaston Régis’s two discs are much rarer. One is devoted to Chopin’s Tarantelle, Op.43 and the other three to the music of Saint-Saëns recorded months after Régis organised a festival of the composer’s music. It’s particularly revealing to hear him play the Valse mignonne, Op.104 as the composer made two recordings of this, the first in in 1904 and a remake in 1919 and both can be heard in CD 1.
Francis Planté’s recordings were made on a single day, 4 July 1928, when he was 89 years old and living in retirement in his country home. Refusing to come to the studio in Paris as he had earlier, in 1915, insisted on performing behind a screen in concerts so audiences couldn’t see him, Planté was – as ever – doing things on his own terms and he plays on his own Érard piano. The repertoire he plays focuses on Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann and a few others. These are the only electrical recordings in the set so strictly speaking incongruous, but he is so much the exemplar of the French style, with a generous tonal range and full of capricious immediacy, that a set such as this would have been much the poorer without him. He reveals a real sense of personality in Mendelssohn but is uneven in Chopin where he can be bangy and drops quite a few notes along the way. The famously splashy end of the Etude in C major is graced with a spoken ‘Merde!’ from the pianist, something that made it to the released disc to the everlasting pleasure of listeners. The ‘Winter Wind’ is equally splashy but he was 89 and we are fortunate that his art was preserved at all, if imperfectly.
Lucien Wurmser’s selection was recorded in 1911 in Paris. His rubati in Chopin are intriguingly personal but it’s a shame that one or two of the sides are heard in dim sound – notably his own Petit aubade – and there’s a scrunchy Schubert-Fischof Rosamunde. Wurmser later made even more revealing recordings when in 1929 he recorded Debussy Préludes but this 1911 selection suggests an able practitioner.
The transfers and remastering are first class. In the Saint-Saëns remasterings, Andrew Hallifax has worked hard to improve previous APR work. His pitch correction is as good as Marston’s and the results sound, if anything, a little better. For example, those pops and scratches in the 1919 recordings have been removed and in the case of the Diémer sides, where Marston brings forward the sound somewhat at the expense of higher frequencies, Hallifax retains those higher frequences and makes the 1904 recordings of Le Chant du Nautonier sound significantly less torrid than it does on Marston. APR’s transfers of the Pugno sides are a touch noisier than Marston’s but have eliminated the crackles and stresses preserved on the competitor recording. The sound is more present here, and alive, as you will plainly hear in the Chopin Funeral March. Tahra transferred the Roger-Miclos sides (review) but again she sounds freer and fresher here.
So, essential items for your specialist pianophile shelves and whether you select Marston or APR – and the decision may well rest with the pianists involved – you will be assured of high-quality restoration work.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review: Rob Challinor (December 2024)
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Contents
CD 1
Camille Saint-Saëns (piano)
Cadenza on Afrique (Improvisation from Africa. Fantasie for piano and orchestra, Op 89
Valse mignonne Op 104
Valse nonchalante Op 110
Piano Concerto No 2 in G minor Op 22 Incomplete: Extracts
Rapsodie d’Auvergne for piano and orchestra Op 73; Incomplete: Extracts
recorded 26 June 1904
Suite algérienne Op 60 No 3: Rêverie du soir à Blidah. No 4: Marche militaire française
Première Mazurka Op 21
Valse mignonne Op 104
Prélude (Movement 1 of Le Déluge, Op 45) with Gabriel Willaume (violin)
Élégie Op 143 with Gabriel Willaume (violin)
recorded 24 November 1919
Havanaise Op 83 with Gabriel Willaume (violin)
recorded 26 November 1920
Louis Diémer (piano)
Louis Diémer: Grande Valse de Concert Op 37
Louis Diémer: Le Chant du Nautonier Op 12
Benjamin Godard: Valse No 5 ‘Valse chromatique’ Op 88
Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte VI Op 67 No 4 in C major, ‘Spinnerlied’: Presto
Fryderyk Chopin: Nocturne in D flat major Op 27 No 2
recorded 1904
Louis Diémer: Le Chant du Nautonier Op 12émer
Louis Diémer: Grande Valse de Concert Op 37
recorded 1906
Vincent d’Indy (piano)
Tableaux de voyage Op 33 No 4: Lac vert No 8: Halte, au soir No 6: La poste No 9: Départ matinal
Danses rythmiques (No 2 of Poème des montagnes, Op 15)
recorded 7 June 1923
CD 2
Raoul Pugno (piano)
George Frideric Handel: Suite in G major HWV441 Gavotte & Variations
Alessandro Scarlatti: Sonata in A major Kk24
Raoul Pugno: Impromptu-valse
Fryderyk Chopin: Waltz in A flat major Op 34 No 1
Franz Liszt: Rapsodie hongroise XI (No 11 in A minor / F sharp major of Hungarian Rhapsodies, S244)
Carl Maria von Weber: Rondo brillante J252 Op 62
Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte I Op 19b No 3 in A major: Molto allegro e vivace
Raoul Pugno: Sérénade à la lune
recorded April 1903
Fryderyk Chopin: Nocturne in F sharp major Op 15 No 2
Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte VI Op 67 No 4 in C major, ‘Spinnerlied’: Presto
Jules Massenet: Valse folle
Emmanuel Chabrier: Scherzo-valse (No 10 of Pièces pittoresques)
Raoul Pugno: Valse lent (No 1 of Trois Airs de Ballet)
Fryderyk Chopin: Impromptu No 1 in A flat major Op 29
Fryderyk Chopin: Berceuse in D flat major Op 57
Fryderyk Chopin: Marche funèbre (Movement 3 of Piano Sonata No 2 in B flat minor, Op 35)
Felix Mendelssohn: Scherzo: Presto (No 2 in E minor of Trois fantaisies ou caprices, Op 16
recorded November 1903
Aimée-Marie Roger-Miclos (piano)
Benjamin Godard: Mazurka (No 4 of Suite de danses anciennes et modernes, Op 103)
Fryderyk Chopin: Waltz in D flat major ‘Minute’ Op 64 No 1
Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte VI Op 67 No 4 in C major, ‘Spinnerlied’: Presto
Felix Mendelssohn: Rondo capriccioso in E major Op 14 Extract: Abridged
Franz Liszt: Rapsodie hongroise XIII (No 13 in A minor (vivace only) from Hungarian Rhapsodies, S244)
Franz Liszt: Rapsodie hongroise XI (No 11 in A minor/F sharp major (andante sostenuto to the end) from Hungarian Rhapsodies, S244)
recorded September 1905
Fryderyk Chopin: Nocturne in F sharp major Op 15 No 2
Fryderyk Chopin: Waltz in C sharp minor Op 64 No 2
Felix Mendelssohn: Scherzo: Presto (No 2 in E minor of Trois fantaisies ou caprices, Op 16)
Robert Schumann: Traumes Wirren (No 7 of Fantasiestücke, Op 12)
recorded November 1906
Gaston Régis (piano)
Fryderyk Chopin: Tarantelle in A flat major Op 43
Camille Saint-Saëns: Suite pour le piano Op 90 No 2: Menuet
CD3
Gaston Régis (piano)
Camille Saint-Saëns: Suite pour le piano Op 90 No 3: Gavotte
Camille Saint-Saëns: Valse mignonne Op 104
recorded 21 July 1921
Francis Planté (piano)
Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte I Op 19b No 3 in A major: Molto allegro e vivace
Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte V Op 62 No 6 in A major, ‘Spring Song’: Allegretto grazioso
Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte VI Op 67 No 4 in C major, ‘Spinnerlied’: Presto
Felix Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte Op67 No 6 in E major: Allegretto non troppo
Felix Mendelssohn: Scherzo: Presto (No 2 in E minor of Trois fantaisies ou caprices, Op 16)
Fryderyk Chopin: Études Op 10 No 4 in C sharp minor: Presto No 5 in G flat major, ‘Black Keys’: Vivace No 7 in C major: Vivace
Fryderyk Chopin: Études Op 25 No 1 in A flat major, ‘Aeolian Harp’: Allegro sostenuto No 2 in F minor: Presto No 9 in G flat major, ‘Butterfly’: Allegro vivace No 11 in A minor, ‘Winter Wind’: Lento
Robert Schumann: Drei Romanzen Op 28 No 2 in F sharp major: Einfach
Robert Schumann: Romance (No 3 in D minor of 4 Klavierstücke, Op 32
Robert Schumann: À la fontaine (Am Springbrunnen) (No 9 of Zwölf Vierhändige Clavierstücke für kleine und grosse Kinder, Op 85
Hector Berlioz: Sérénade de Méphistophélès (Part 3 Scene 4 No 3 of La damnation de Faust, Op 24)
Luigi Boccherini: Célèbre menuet de Boccherini, arr. Francis Planté
Christoph Willibald von Gluck: Gavotte (Extract from Iphigénie en Aulide) arr. Francis Planté recorded 4 July 1928
Lucien Wurmser (piano)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Pastorale variée K Anh.209b
Fryderyk Chopin: Mazurka in B minor Op 33 No 4
Fryderyk Chopin: Waltz in A flat major Op 69 No 1
Fryderyk Chopin: Waltz in C sharp minor Op 64 No 2
Lucien Wurmser: Petit aubade
Lucien Wurmser: Impromptu
Franz Schubert: Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern D797 Transcription: Ballet music arr. Robert Fischhof
Franz Schubert: Marche militaire arr. Carl Tausig
recorded 8 April 1911
