A multi-faceted musician, conductor and chamber music player, Alfred Cortot was renowned above all as a pianist. In 1920 a reviewer wrote of him: “Alfred Cortot explores the spiritual depths of music. In the most genuine and unaffected way he is among the most poetic of pianists”. This Naxos re-issue is the second of five volumes devoted to Cortot’s 78rpm recordings of Chopin, featuring at least one version of every published Chopin solo work the pianist recorded during the period. When the June 1934 recordings of the Waltzes were released, The Gramophone critic wrote: “this whole series of valses is played with an artistry that a few technical lapses cannot mar… The records are an object lesson in the difficult art of rubato alone…”.