Don Satz:

>Pianist Samson Francois seems to elicit a wide range of opinions concerning
>his interpretations.  His Chopin piano concertos conducted by Louis Fremaux
>have been reissued on the EMI Great Recordings of the Century series.
>Thumbs up or down?

I've listened to Francois' recording, in the same series, of the two Ravel
concertos with Gaspard de la Nuit, several times.  I loved the left-hand
concerto, liked parts of the G minor, and found the first 2/3 of Gaspard
wonderful.  Francois is very engagingly capricious-- there's a great quote
in the booklet from him about how he preferred "playing WITH the piano"
to playing the piano. I listened to realaudio clips from his EMIFrance
recording of the 24 Debussy Preludes, and they sound like quite perverted
readings in a very positive sense of that word.  Sooner or later I'm gonna
order that from France.

Jon Lewis
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