Search - Frederic Chopin, Alfred Cortot :: Chopin: Preludes, Impromtus, Barcarolle & Berceuse - Alfred Cortot

Clarifying the previous review

Richard Frankel | New York City | 07/19/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Mr. Wilde is spot-on in his comparison of Cortot's 1926 and 1933 recordings of the Preludes (although the most recent reissue of the 1926 recording, on Naxos Historical Series, has noticeably improved the "fuzzy" sound). What Mr. Wilde doesn't really make clear is that this EMI "Great Recordings" contains Cortot's 1933 recording.



Of course, that information should really be provided by Amazon. All too frequently, I don't dare purchase a CD of a historic performance on Amazon, because the "Product Information" omits two essential pieces of information: when the recording was made, and when the CD was remastered.



We need the former information because many artists recorded the same work over and over again, with wildly varying results and in wildly varying sound quality.



We need the latter information because the technology for transferring an analogue recording to CD has improved tremendously since CDs were first issued. My own advice would be to look for a "transfer date" or "re-mastering date" of 1977 or later, that being about the time when the various labels began to use "bit-mapping", "noise-shaping", etc. (Such technology is a major component of what EMI calls "ART Technology", which they use on every historic reissue in this "Great Recordings Of The Century" series.)



In fact, this particular CD is a perfect example: I was looking for Cortot's 1933 recording of the Preludes. Naxos's website told me that their CD had the earlier, 1926 recording. I then turned to Amazon's listings, and saw that the most likely choices were the EMI box-set of (nearly)all of Cortot's Chopin, and this single disc. Amazon gave no information on recording dates for either set, but a helpful customer-submitted review of the box-set states that contains neither the 1926 nor the 1933 recordings, but a still-later one from the '40s! (And, as a general rule, Cortot's technique became more and more fallible as the years progressed.)



As for this single CD...well, of course EMI's "Great Recordings Of The Century" series uses consistently excellent transfers (in other words, the sound is likely to be every bit as good as the original recording allows); but which performance is it? Mr. Wilde's review isn't quite clear on that matter, so I turned to EMI's website, where I eventually learned that this CD has Cortot's 1933 recording of the Preludes.



Amazon could make most of this detective work unnecessary, simply by providing a BACK-cover photo of each CD along with the front-cover photo; it's often on the back cover that recording dates and re-mastering dates are listed. And Amazon could help further by ensuring that when we hit "Enlarge Photo" (to read some detail about the contents), then it's the PHOTO that gets enlarged, rather than just the box in which it appears! But Amazon really does need to start providing the Recording Date (rec.1933, for example)after each title on historic reissues, as well as a "Transfer Date" or "Remastering Date" (Rem.2003)."