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ARTIST
TITLE
Rediscovered Master: Madeleine de Valmalète
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
ARB 144CD ARB 144CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
10/16/2015

2005 release; awarded the Diapason d'Or by the French Diapason magazine. Youthful energy and insight are abundant in the pianism of Madeleine de Valmalète (1899-1999), who startles with her premiere recordings of Ravel's music, hers being the first ever of his Tombeau de Couperin (1928), hardly surpassed to this day. The adventurous Madeleine became the second woman in France to get a driver's license. Playing confidently into her ninth decade, she is equally sharp and alluring playing Mozart in her 93rd year. Along with her complete 1928 recordings made in Berlin when she was 29, this set includes several private documents from later years and a full text on her long life. Whereas most French pianists take a careful approach, de Valmalète projected an excitement that few could attain and sustain. Arbiter once had a free night in her city and fretted over whether she was still alive, and if so, what shape would she be in at 99? Days later, a contact found out that not only was she well but had gone swimming in the Mediterranean on the day the label was in town. On her 100th birthday she ate and drank, mingling around a table with dozens of well-wishers in Marseille, and passed away only a few days later. This CD also includes performances of compositions by Modest Mussorgsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Franz Liszt, Claude Debussy, Manuel de Falla, Gabriel Fauré, and Alexander Alabiev.