A remarkably interesting survey of the recordings of a quintet
of French women pianists occupies two well-filled discs. The first
to come under scrutiny is Aimée Marie Roger-Miclos, none of whose
Fonotipias, recorded c.1905, I can recollect having seen on CD
before. I’ve certainly not come across them. Born in 1860 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.
Marie Panthes (1871-1955) was eleven years
younger than Roger-Miclos and from a Russian background. Her
playing is uneven. The Chopin Mazurka, recorded in 1936, has
a rather showy, attention-seeking quality to it whilst the Nocturne
feasts on a booming bass. The Mozart-attributed piece and the
Albéniz seem on this showing rather more representative of her
better, more artistic side. There’s a four-minute interview
conducted four years before her death, which will please all
those who like to hear the speaking voices of musicians.
Youra Guller is becoming something of a
Tahra mini-speciality (see review).
The remainder of the first disc is given over to her beautiful
performances of Chopin Mazurkas. Everything that was wrong in
Panthes’s performances of Op.17 No.4 is right in Guller’s. And
parenthetically I think that this selection far better represents
her than the Chopin items presented on TAH630. Here in 1956
she is subtle, unaffected, full of the moods and shifting colours
and patterns of the Mazurkas. It’s most impressive playing.
The second disc shows us Madeleine de Valmalète,
another admired but these days overlooked musician. She lived
to a great age – born in 1899 and dying in 1999. Admired by
Saint-Saëns she formed an esteemed piano trio (the Trio de Paris)
and recorded for Polydor in Germany before the war. The private performances in this Tahra disc
are undated and predominately given over to Couperin and Scarlatti.
The amateur recording set up was not helpful to her tone -
it can be painfully close-up at times – but we can still appreciate
some splendid finger precision and touch. There’s some flutter
on the tape of La Fleurie [track 6] but the sequence is well
chosen to highlight her gifts. Finally we have some tremendous
performances from Agnelle Bundervoët made in the mid 1950s for
Ducretet-Thomson. Her Bach-Busoni Chaconne hasn’t the icy perfection
of Michelangeli’s but has a greater sense of expressive warmth
– evidenced by one or two moments of excessive rushing. This
sense of excitement and technical control is further reinforced
by the Liszt brace; her more obviously poetic instincts by the
Schumann pieces with which her part of the programme ends. With
her, virtuosity was never an externalised component; it was
indivisible from her artistic persona and she is a musician
of the highest calibre, Born in 1922 she is still alive.
Tahra’s discs come with an extensive fifty-six
page booklet, all but the last ten or so of which are in French.
There are full French biographies and very much smaller English
summaries. In short this is an undertaking of real value and
virtue; transfers are splendid even if some of the private material
is a little rough; enthusiasm for its contents seldom flags
or palls.
Jonathan Woolf
