Samson François: L'édition intégrale

Over the past few years EMI France has blessed avid piano recording collectors with budget-priced boxed sets respectively devoted to French and/or French-based artists like Yves Nat, Marcelle Meyer, Georges Cziffra, and Aldo Ciccolini. To mark the 40th anniversary of Samson François' untimely death on October 27, 1970 at 48, EMI has brought out a 36-CD set encompassing his complete recordings. It expands upon a long-out-of-print 33-CD "complete" edition that came out in a lavish red velvet box by including unreleased material (French Radio performances of the Franck Symphonic Variations, Prokofiev Fifth and Bartók Third concertos, live 1964 recitals from the Salle Pleyel) and previously overlooked items new to CD. Only one track is missing: the audio portion of a brief interview with François by Pierre Hiegel, which was included in EMI's 1990 Les Introuvables de Samson François reissue. Still, everything here has been remastered anew from the best possible source material. Random comparisons between this release and earlier EMI François CDs reveal the present transfers to be fuller-bodied and more open in the extreme registers, with an apparent increase in amplitude. You'll often notice this in softer solo works, along with a higher yet unobtrusive level of tape hiss. Just as the sound quality varies from session to session, so does François' carefree artistry. Like his one-time mentor Alfred Cortot, François seemed to play for the moment rather than for all time when it came to the recording process. You never know how François is going to show up from one recording to the next. Will he be sloppy or technically impeccable, cavalier or concentrated, exhausted or inspired? Certain of the 1954 Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies are full of forced rubatos and petulant accentuations (Nos. 2 and 11), and more than a few slapdash inaccuracies (No. 6). Others, however, like Nos. 7 and 9, sizzle with fire and bravura, while not even the drab sonics prevent No. 3's lugubrious basses from pinning you to the wall. Likewise, multiple versions of the same works reveal fascinating differences. While François plows ahead in the 1954 Chopin Fourth Ballade coda, both his earlier and later studio traversals render the coda more expansively and with more detail-oriented phrasing, and so does yet another version, live from Tokyo. Four Chopin Op. 35 "Funeral March" sonatas (a 1955 studio recording new to CD, a remake from the following year, the 1964 studio stereo version, and one from the Salle Pleyel concert on January 17, 1964) offer pronounced variations in tempo, touch, dynamics, and pedaling. A rare 1958 Chopin Waltz cycle new to CD proves a corrective to its better known, more overwrought stereo counterpart. For more extensive commentary on François' Chopin, I refer you to my review of EMI's 10-disc Chopin anthology (type Q4379 in Search Reviews). Similar ups and downs characterize François' Debussy and Ravel (again, type Q8295 in Search Reviews), but his stupefying and demonically-tinged 1947 "Scarbo" from Ravel's Gaspard de la nuit is one of the greatest piano recordings ever made. François' Schumann also lives and breathes unpredictability. For example, the Symphonic Etudes alternate between overly emphatic and straightforwardly supple. He'll drag out Variation VIII's "French Overture" dotted rhythms to the point of inertia, only to give us one of the fleetest and most effortless readings on disc of the difficult chord-based Variation IX. I suspect that François set down Beethoven's three "name" sonatas more for commercial considerations than any innate affinity for the composer's style. Yet passionately poised and thoughtfully delineated accounts of Franck's Prelude, Chorale and Fugue and Bach-Busoni C major Toccata, Adagio and Fugue reveal the pianist at his best, together with well-characterized and technically shipshape Prokofiev selections (the Third and Fifth Concertos, the Seventh Sonata, the Toccata and excerpts from the Visions Fugitives). In fact, Prokofiev and French contemporaries like Honegger and Milhaud inform François' own piano concerto and the non-jazzy sections of his score to Jean-Claude Bonnardot's film Ballade pour un voyou. No doubt the pianist's staunchest admirers will find EMI's extremely reasonable price per disc sufficient incentive to embrace Samson François en masse, warts and all. The booklet notes include a fine essay by Alain Lompech, interesting photos and program replicas, plus full discographical data. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com