LDV78.9

MICHEL DALBERTO 21 Musicians also forge their personality by regularly listening to their elders. I attended the early French recitals of Maurizio Pollini, the appearances of Alfred Brendel, Claudio Arrau, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, and Daniel Barenboim who in those days used to direct the English Chamber Orchestra in the Mozart concertos. I note that all these pianists admired the art of Alfred Cortot. In their remarkable study of Cortot, FrançoisAnselmini and Rémi Jacobs* discuss his arrival in theUSSR in the 1920s. His recitals at the Moscow Conservatory caused a real split between pro- and anti-Cortot factions. Heinrich Neuhaus was an ardent champion of the French pianist. Neuhaus, the teacher of Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, two eminent interpreters of Beethoven’s music and yet so different from each other . . . * FrançoisAnselmini and Rémi Jacobs, Alfred Cortot (Paris: Fayard, 2018).