EMI recognised early that in the young Michel Béroff (born 1950) they had found a virtuoso firebrand with a cast-iron technique and a strong musical personality ideally suited to 20th-century repertory. While his fellow Paris Conservatoire contemporaries – Jean-Phillipe Collard and Pascal Rogé – were recording standard repertory by Brahms, Schumann, Rachmaninov, Poulenc, Satie, Fauré and Ravel for EMI and Decca, Béroff’s extraordinary rhythmic acuteness, technical precision, tonal clarity and interpretative passion for the music of the classic modernists made him the ideal champion for some of the most technically demanding works of the 20th century.

Béroff’s first solo recording for EMI, made when he was just 19, was an ambitious set of Messiaen’s Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jésus. Béroff had won the 1967 Olivier Messiaen Competition in Royan so this composer was the obvious choice for his solo recording debut. At the time, the only direct competition on record came from John Ogdon and Yvonne Loriod, but Béroff’s freshness, astonishing technical command and instinctive grasp of Messiaen’s complex musical language placed this version at the top. In the 55 years since its initial release, there have arguably been better recordings of Vingt Regards, but Béroff’s musical command and youthful ardour still make his a compelling version. Another project highly regarded at the time was Béroff’s survey of Debussy’s solo piano music, begun in the early 1970s and completed in 1980. In the 1950s, Gieseking’s perfumed, veiled and atmospheric approach was perceived as capturing the authentic sound of Debussy, but by the 1970s there had been a re-evaluation of the composer’s style and with it a search for an altogether different sound world – one that was perhaps closer to that Debussy imagined. Béroff was part of this movement: in place of the Impressionistic sound-soup and occasionally muddy pedal effects of Gieseking, here we have precision, clarity, rhythmic vitality, textural fidelity and a generally more muscular approach. Again, there have since been more idiomatic Debussy cycles, and Béroff can at time sound a little driven and hard-edged, but the most impressive playing – the 1973 recording of the Études – still holds its own.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Béroff produced a steady stream of solo albums, including two versions of Prokoviev’s Visions fugitives, Op 22 (I preferred the better engineered recording from 1983), Kabalevsky’s Second Sonata, Op 45, and the complete solo music of Stravinsky. For me, his finest solo recordings can be heard in two superb Bartók recitals, Messiaen’s early Preludes and Études (recorded in 1978 and illustrating how Béroff’s artistic personality had evolved in the 10 years since his recording of Vingt Regards), two magnificent discs of a sadly unfinished survey of Prokoviev Sonatas (Nos 1-3, 6 and 7), and the second disc of the Stravinsky, covering the later solo piano works with near definitive performances of the Piano Sonata and the Serenade in A, and a miraculously characterised Three movements from Petrushka that is up with the best. There are two Schumann recitals comprising Kreisleriana and Waldszenen (1970), and the Humoreske and C major Fantasie (1976-77). There is no question of Béroff’s technical accomplishment nor his musical sincerity, but I found the playing on both discs disappointingly literal and self-conscious, lacking tonal warmth and poetry – plenty of Florestan but not enough Eusebius. As with all Béroff’s recordings, the cleanliness, clarity and artistic consistency of his playing is remarkable, as is a rhythmic acuity that enables him to make sense of the syncopations in the last movement of Kreisleriana in a way that eludes some pianists.

One might conclude that the standard 19th-century Romantic literature wasn’t really Béroff’s thing, but then turn to his account of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, together with a collection of lesser-known works, where Béroff produces a scintillating range of colour and delicate nuance that transforms this often clumsy-sounding work into an idiomatic and transparent thing of beauty. It might not be to all tastes but Béroff’s Pictures forced me to rethink my view of this work, which is exactly what a great interpretation should do.

Perhaps the most notable – and poignant – of Beroff’s solo discography is the last record he made for EMI, in 1987. In the mid-1980s Beroff’s career was halted by focal dystonia, which affected his right hand and for a while made playing impossible. He bravely continued, focusing on left-hand repertory, recording a stupendous account of Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the left hand in 1987 (for DG, so not included here) and a recital of left-hand works (for EMI, disc 3 in the current set) by Saint-Saëns, Bartók and Scriabin, also including Brahms’s transcription of Bach’s Chaconne and seven Chopin/Godowsky Études. Béroff’s left-hand technique is phenomenal – the ferociously difficult Godowsky arrangements are dashed off with nonchalant aplomb and it remains a lasting testament to Béroff’s resilience.

In addition to the solo discography for EMI, Béroff also featured in a series of exceptional recordings as a collaborative artist. His first chamber session for EMI was with Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, recorded at Abbey Road in 1968 when Béroff was 18, partnering his much older colleagues Erich Gruenberg, Gervase de Peyer and William Pleeth. The recording is still – after more than half a century – justly celebrated as one of the finest versions of this dark masterpiece on record. Other collaborations with violinists Ulf Hoelscher, Pierre Amoyal and Augustin Dumay followed – some more successful than others. Béroff partners Augustin Dumay in Brahms’s violin sonatas, recorded in 1978-79, but the balance favours the piano and Béroff pushes on relentlessly with scant regard for his partner. Perhaps this was an arranged marriage of convenience by EMI, but the collaborations with Hoelscher and Amoyal seem to have been much more congenial. With Amoyal he recorded notable versions of Prokoviev’s two violin sonatas, and with Hoelscher a superb disc of Szymanowski’s works for violin and piano, fine versions of Schumann’s two violin sonatas, a powerfully convincing account of Richard Strauss’s unfamiliar Violin Sonata, Op 18, and perhaps the most relaxed and cohesive version of Franck’s Violin Sonata I’ve heard.

Beroff’s most enduring partnership was with fellow pianist and EMI artist Jean-Philippe Collard. They first worked together in 1971 as two of the four pianists in Milhaud’s Paris Suite for four pianos, but began their duo in 1974, recording the four-hand version of Brahms’s 21 Hungarian Dances and two years later Dvorˇák’s 16 Slavonic Dances, with more Brahms to follow in 1979, the Op 39 Waltzes, Op 52 Liebeslieder Waltzes and the Variations on a theme by Robert Schumann, Op 23. (Disc 9 of this set includes an an earlier recording from 1969 of Brahms’s Op 23, where Béroff is partnered by Jean-Bernard Pommier, which is not as convincing.) Team Béroff/Collard also recorded an exquisite Ravel album and together they completed Béroff’s survey of Debussy’s piano music in 1982. Their final disc was issued in 1994 – a happy collaboration marking Béroff’s recovery from focal dystonia, playing again with two hands on a lovely album of French piano duets.

Another musically satisfying collaboration came in 1984-85 with an achingly beautiful recital of Debussy Mélodies with Barbara Hendricks. There is no sense of competition between singer and pianist, but two supremely gifted artists at the peak of their powers enjoying making music in complete interpretative synergy – this is one of the highlights of the collection.

Béroff’s recordings of works for piano and orchestra have rarely been out of the catalogue and with good reason. His first concerto recording was issued in 1972 and featured Stravinsky’s Capriccio, Movements and the Concerto for piano and wind instruments, with Seiji Ozawa and the Orchestre de Paris in performances that have aged well. Béroff’s 1974 recordings of the five Prokoviev concertos, partnered by Kurt Masur and the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, are still considered one of the best collected editions of all five with blistering, white-hot performances of the second and third concertos and superb orchestral support from the Leipzig players. Béroff also recorded Liszt’s complete concertante works with the same forces between 1977 and 1979: these were highly rated at the time and continue to be so, but even Béroff’s elegant, tasteful performance of the Hungarian Fantasy can’t convince me that this is a good piece. Also from 1977 is Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie, with Jeanne Loriod on ondes Martenot and André Previn conducting the LSO – again still regularly recommended. The only concerto recordings here that show their age are the Bach, with the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris conducted by Jean-Pierre Wallez, recorded between 1981 and 1993. It’s such a pity Béroff didn’t record Bartók’s Second Concerto.

Michel Béroff is 75 this year – he is still teaching and conducting, and a jury member on international piano competitions, but as a pianist he has made virtually no recordings in the last 30 years. His 25-year contract with EMI began when he was 18 and was over at 44. It may be that he’d achieved his musical goals, or perhaps – to paraphrase Horowitz – he realised that there was more to life than playing octaves. Whatever the reasons for ending his recording career, there is no doubt that this collected edition – now on Erato – documents the tumultuous and meteoric rise of a formidably gifted pianist with a huge technique and distinctive artistic personality. These recordings continue to command our attention – and their place in the catalogue. IP

The Recordings
 Michel Béroff: The Complete Erato recordings
 Erato 21732 41938 (42 CDs)