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an audience of one, and
Thyssens-Valentin is in perfect accord with this. Those messages, however, especially in the later Nocturnes and Barcarolles, are often of great profundity, and she has both the heart and the technique to convey them. I have not often been so struck by Fauré's extraordinary courage in distilling emotions far too deep for words from the silent isolation of his old age. Why is Thyssens-Valentin not better known? I suppose that being a superlative interpreter of Fauré was not a reliable passport to international fame in the middle years of the 20th century.
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The critic Bryce
Morrison, a specialist in piano music, wrote of her playing of Fauré as "distinctive, fluid, understated and of a rare tonal and poetic delicacy and finesse … No other pianist, in my experience, has shown a comparable inwardness or capacity to penetrate to the very quick or essence
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I now have not the slightest doubt that
Germaine Thyssens-Valentin (1902–87) was a great and inspired pianist; I've heard Fauré playing that approaches, or even occasionally equals hers, but none that surpasses it. Fauré's music has a confiding quality to it, as though it were a message intended for
106:, where she made her first appearance the following year. Between 1956 and 1959, she recorded a series of discs for the French recording company Ducretet-Thomson. They were not widely available outside France, and as the company failed to keep pace with the introduction of
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in
Belgium, died in July 1907, when his eldest child was not quite five years old. Encouraged by her mother, she began to study the piano when she was about five years old, and later also studied the harpsichord. At the age of eight she made her concert debut playing
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at a series of concerts. She gave a second complete cycle the following year. Between 1958 and 1966 she also taught. In the 1960s she took part in the first performance of a complete cycle of Fauré's chamber music in company with, among others,
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Though
Thyssens-Valentin was little known outside France during her lifetime, the reissue on compact discs of her Ducretet-Thomson recordings, particularly those of Fauré's music, brought her to a wider international audience. In
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After 25 years away from professional music, Thyssens-Valentin resumed her career in 1951, with a performance of the Mozart concerto in which she had made her debut as an eight-year-old. The conductor for her return concert was
35:, and in the 1950s, after a long absence from performing while she raised a family of five children, she recorded a series of discs of Fauré's music that have been reissued on compact disc to considerable acclaim.
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In
December 1924 Thyssens married Paul Valentin, and hyphenated his name with hers. By now she had begun to establish herself as a piano soloist, appearing with leading chamber musicians and with the
87:. To support herself while a student, she gave piano lessons and played incidental music in cinemas. In 1920 she was awarded the first prize at the Conservatoire in piano and in musical history.
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in the
Netherlands, the eldest of the three children of a Dutch father, born Joannes Jacobus Thijssen but known as Jean-Jacques Thyssens, and his wife Jeanne Caroline Schmidt, who was from
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27:(27 July 1902 – 7 July 1987) was a Dutch-born classical pianist of Franco-Dutch parentage, noted for her performances of French music. She studied under
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Mozart, Piano
Concerto No. 23 K. 488 – Camerata Academica of Salzburg, Bernhard Paumgartner (1953, Testament SBT 1401)
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of all recordings of the
Nocturnes, Stephen Plaistow judged Thyssens-Valentin's recording to be the finest.
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winning recording of Fauré's
Nocturnes is especially admired: in November 2011, in a comparative review for
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Fauré - Complete Piano Works / New Mastering (Century's recording : Germaine Thyssens-Valentin)
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Thyssens-Valentin retired in 1983; her last concert, in November of that year comprised music by
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Fauré, Piano Quintets; Piano Quartet No 1, with the Quartet of the ORTF (Editions A. Charlin)
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in 1974, Fauré's daughter-in-law greeted her with the words, "Oh! Madame, quel effort!"
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Nin, Chants populaires espagnols – with Maria Kareska, soprano (Ducretet-Thomson, 1956)
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She studied at the Royal Academy of Liège, and in 1914, at the age of 13, entered the
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327:(booklet) (in English, German, and French). Recording by Germaine Thyssens-Valentin.
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Fauré, Works for piano – (1956–59, Testament SBT 1215, 1262, 1263 and 1400)
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In 1956, Thyssens-Valentin became the first pianist to play all
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recording its catalogue went out of print during the 1960s.
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wrote that although never having previously heard of her,
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Franck, Prelude, choral & fugue (1954, Testament)
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Fauré, Gabriel; Thyssens-Valentin, Germaine (1958).
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Franck, Prelude, aria & finale (1954, Testament)
555:Harari, Jean-Marc. "Germaine Thyssens-Valentin",
174:of one of music's most misunderstood geniuses."
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203:– with Jeanne Sleeve-Thais, piano (Testament)
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599:20th-century French women classical pianists
483:Nocturnes : de I Ă 8 : pour piano
459:Nocturnes : de I Ă 8 : pour piano
456:(1958). Thyssens-Valentin, Germaine (ed.).
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79:. She studied in the class of
20:Thyssens-Valentin in the 1950s
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609:Conservatoire de Paris alumni
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505:"Germaine Thyssens-Valentin"
624:20th-century women pianists
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325:Fauré: Nocturnes Nos. 1-13
66:Piano Concerto No. 23 in A
25:Germaine Thyssens-Valentin
619:Musicians from Maastricht
614:Dutch emigrants to France
531:Awards Issue 2002, p. 39
421:"Fauré – 13 Barcarolles"
379:, "Building a Library",
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267:88 notes pour piano solo
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73:Conservatoire de Paris
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160:magazine, the critic
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429:, August 2002, p. 67
271:Jean-Pierre Thiollet
557:International Piano
541:Discographical data
368:Plaistow, Stephen.
323:Lancien, Jeannine.
115:Fauré's piano works
33:Paris Conservatoire
485:. Paris: Hamelle.
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523:Morrison, Bryce.
370:"Fauré Nocturnes"
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279:978 2 3505 5192 0
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189:Discography
183:BBC Radio 3
583:Categories
550:References
529:Gramophone
509:Gramophone
466:27 January
426:Gramophone
377:Archive-It
305:19 January
157:Gramophone
149:Reputation
137:, Mozart,
49:Maastricht
491:165632064
381:CD Review
197:Debussy,
139:Beethoven
124:Nocturnes
572:video:
373:Archived
341:50640727
299:Geneanet
243:BnF Data
570:YouTube
329:Bromley
252:16 June
143:Debussy
57:Peugeot
31:at the
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62:Mozart
53:Alsace
226:Notes
487:OCLC
468:2024
337:OCLC
307:2023
275:ISBN
254:2019
177:Her
135:Bach
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