Samson François: The Complete EMI Recordings

EMI Classics is proud to release the complete EMI recordings of one of the most well-known pianists, Samson Fran§ois. This exclusive 36-CD box set includes all his early recordings that were mainly devoted to Fr©d©ric Chopin. The height of Samson's art is probably to be found in the ballades (recorded between 26 and 28 October 1954, and first issued as an immensely successful 10" LP) and the dazzling interpretation of the nocturnes (recorded in May and June 1966). In the ballades and the nocturnes Samson establishes an allembracing color with the aid of the loud pedal, although he modulates its power and creates a rainbow effect through the highly skilled, yet quite unpredictable use of the soft pedal. This alternation between the two pedals gives a breathless feeling to his approach. You will never find there the peaceful, semi-philosophical havens, nor the "landscaped" perspectives of neo-Classical pastoralism favored by so many of his fellow artists, notably in the Fourth Ballade.If we are to go by the history of gramophone recording, no other pianist before him had discovered the personal, inimitable accent which Samson gives to the melodic pattern of these works, and which was not to be taken up by any other: over-intimate, perhaps, or over-rhapsodic, it is stylistically close to improvisation. If Samson still seems to be following a given declamatory scheme in the ballades, then the range of styles and expressiveness which he deploys for the abundant inventiveness of the nocturnes, has nothing to do with the innermost nature of the interpreter. For a good decade, Samson did not go back on his beliefs: he reinforced them.Samson's life was abruptly cut short in 1970 at a ridiculously early age -- he was 46. Neither as pupil nor as teacher did he have any interest in pedagogy. Was this because he chose to keep his distance from all relationship or dependency? There is something of the stateless person in Samson's pianistic style.