CECILE OUSSET

I remember vivdly the day I first discovered this magical and enthralling pianist. I had been shopping at the age of around 17/18 and had seen a record of French Piano Music performed by Cecile Ousset. Not knowing anything of her I brought the record home, and it is as if I have never looked back since.

Never before had I heard the piano sparkle in quite the same way - her way through Chabrier, Faure, and especially Ravel and Saint Saens, had me sitting down paying attention rather than pottering with other bits and pieces that were becoming more and more urgent!

Her life, from what I have read, was certainly interesting, and she seems to be a character of treat vivacity and great joie de vivre - although this is something that is expected given her style of playing.

In an interview she describes how she met her husband, and there was to be a piano recital a few days later. He dutifully came to the auditorium, and took his seat. Alas, the seat where his new young lady should have been was, for no apparent reason, vacant. To his surprise, she was there, in all her greatness, but on the platform - she hadn't told him that it was her that was giving the recital!

Ousset was born in a small town in the French Pyrenees. The seventh of seven daughters. Her father was in the military, her first performance (I think this is correct) was in Egypt at the age of 5!

The family moved to Paris where she could take up her training at the Paris Conservatoire, where she was taught by Marcel Ciampi, and also by the tremendous Alfred Cortot (who will surely appear on these pages very soon!) She began at the Conservatoire with months of scales and arpeggios - terribly boring and not expected of a young and gifted girl who had always impressed people with her wonderful pianistic abilities! These months did, however, give her a strength of technique to enable the great pianist she was to become.

Early in her career she won one competition after another - yet for around ten years after that she was in the wilderness. No important engagements, no important recording contracts, although she did continue to perform - years which she later valued as giving her an opportunity to mature as an artist.

In the early 1980s she stood in at short notice for Martha Argerich at the Edinburgh Festival, and after that her career really took off. She was a regular performer at the Proms, where her great piece seemed to be the Saint Saens Concerto no 2. She also performed the Schumann, and the Poulenc and possibly other works.

I remember standing in the queue at the Albert Hall as she came round the side of the hall on the evening of the Poulenc Concerto performance. She looked very French!! The hall was of course packed, as were all the auditoriums generally where she performed.

I remember hearing her live on three occasions - the Poulenc at the Proms, the Mendelssohn First Concerto at the Festival Hall, and the Ravel Concerto in G at, I think, the Barbican.

On the concert platform she cut an impressive figure - certainly that was the case when she performed the Ravel as I recall. A tall lady with long blond hair of curls and ringlets, a long black evening gown with a deep gold hemn, and my word did that piano talk!

Her recorded repertoire was extensive - she was the first woman pianist in about 20 years to record the Second Concerto of Brahms, and for this she won the Grande Prix du Disque. Her performances of the Chopin Sonatas 2 and 3, and all the Ballades and Scherzi are among the best I know, as well as her recordings of the Concerts of Schumann, Rachmaninoff 2, 3, and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the Prokofiev 3rd, Poulenc, both the Ravel, the Gershwin, and the Liszt no.1.

Alas a few years back a troublesome pack pain caused her to retire - apparently, she was no longer enjoying performing...listen to her recordings and the one thing that comes out of them is how much she seems to enjoy the music - if she no longer enjoyed it, I am certain it would never have been the same.

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