Montgeroult’s Abundance of Études

courtesy of Naxos of America

Those that have been following this site for at least a year or so will probably have become acquainted with the pianist and composer Hélène Antoinette Marie de Nervo de Montgeroult. One of her compositions was a set of improvisations on “ La Marseillaise,” which, in spite of her noble background, probably saved her from the guillotine during the Reign of Terror that followed the overthrow of the French monarchy. She is one of the composers in Sarah Cahill’s The Future is Female repertoire; and her complete piano sonatas (nine of them) were recorded for Grand Piano by Nicolas Horvath. This month BIS Records, based in Sweden, released the latest album devoted entirely to her music. This is the sixth album that British pianist Clare Hammond has recorded for that label, and it consists of a collection of 29 Montgeroult études.

Those études were selected from Montgeroult’s most extensive undertaking, which was entitled Cours complet pour l'enseignement du forte-piano (complete course for teaching fortepiano), which was published in 1820. This is one of those cases in which “complete” is not an exaggeration. Over the course of three volumes, this publication offers 114 études along with 972 exercises. For her new release, Hammond has selected 29 of the études. Since the last publication of her sonatas, her Opus 5, took place in 1811, one might speculate that this vast collection of pedagogical content may have been directed at those wishing to perform her sonatas properly.

At this point I should raise a personal disclaimer, which is that compositions that make for good pedagogy do not necessarily make for good recital offerings. That bias has grown on me over the course of listening to no end of piano recitals that drew upon the études composed by Frédéric Chopin. (For the record, as they say, these were all published after the publication of the Cours complet; and it would not surprise me if Chopin had no awareness of who Montgeroult was or what she had achieved.) My personal bias amounts to an aversion to performances that provide a complete account of a collection of études, such as the Opus 10 and Opus 25 publications of Chopin. In a recital setting such performances tend to devolve into the experience of what Winston Churchill supposedly called “one damned thing after another.” (Churchill was talking about history at the time.)

Mind you, this may just be my way of compensating for the fact that I cannot play such études very well (if at all as my joints get stiffer). Thus, while I can appreciate the technical qualities of Montgeroult’s études, I cannot say that I am drawn to this new album for an overall listening experience. I can certainly admire the fireworks, particularly when they are distilled down to durations of less than a minute. However, I do not feel any sense of journey through Hammond’s 29 selections (nor, to be fair, should I expect such a sense).

On the other hand I certainly appreciate those that enjoy having CDs that account for all of the études that Chopin composed, and I would invite them to consider Hammond’s album for an alternative approach to piano pedagogy.