Colette Maze, pianist whose recording career began late, dies at 109

When French composer Claude Debussy died at his home in Paris in 1918, he probably had no idea that one of his youngest fans lived just a few blocks away. Colette Saulnier, not yet four, was already learning the rudiments of music, and even at that age she was drawn to the work of her famous neighbor.

“I like these climates where you have to create an atmosphere, a daydream,” said Colette Maze, as she later became known, in a 2021 interview with the website Pianote. “I am connected to Debussy because he corresponds to my deepest sensibility.”

Mrs. Maze would become an accomplished pianist and teacher. But it wasn’t until the late 1990s, when she was over 80, that her son persuaded her to record commercially.

What followed was one of the most surprising second acts in the history of classical music: seven albums, largely but not exclusively the music of Debussy, and a fan base drawn as much by Ms. Maze’s exquisite fingerwork as by her sheer, irrepressible joy, which was expressed in interviews with French television and in videos posted on it her Facebook page.

“As soon as I get up, I start playing the piano to connect with the forces of life,” she told Pianote. “It’s a habit. That has always been the case. I don’t have to motivate myself, that’s normal. It’s like an automatic function.”

Ms. Maze, who was widely considered the world’s oldest recording pianist, died on Nov. 19 in the same Paris apartment where she had lived since she was 18, overlooking the Eiffel Tower and the Seine River. She was 109.

Her son, Fabrice Maze, confirmed the death.

Colette Claire Saulnier was born in Paris on June 16, 1914, a month before the start of the First World War. Her father, Léon Saulnier, ran a fertilizer factory and her mother, Denise (Piollet) Saulnier, was a housewife.

She grew up surrounded by music. Her mother, who played the violin, and her maternal grandmother, who played the piano, gave concerts at Saulnier’s house, and chords came in from a piano-playing neighbor. She learned to play at the age of four.

She aspired to become a concert pianist, but her parents – who were strict and, according to her, stingy with their love – disapproved. When she applied for the performance program at the École Normale de Musique, a new conservatory founded by Alfred Cortother parents refused to let her stay home alone to practice for her audition.

Her score was not high enough, but she still qualified for the teaching program. She studied with Mr. Cortot and Nadia Boulanger, who taught some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, including Daniel Barenboim, Virgil Thomson and Philip Glass.

Ms. Maze later credited the Cortot playing method, with its emphasis on relaxation, with her ability to continue at the piano without suffering the kind of joint stiffening that can afflict older pianists.

“If I still play at my age, it is because the teaching of Alfred Cortot and Nadia Boulanger was very flexible and based on improvisation,” she said in a 2018 interview with the newspaper Le Parisien. “He told us that our hand was a diamond at the end of a silk stocking.”

After graduating in 1934, she remained at the conservatory to teach. When the Germans invaded in 1940, she and a friend fled by bicycle to the deep south of France, where they remained until the end of World War II.

Back in Paris she had a relationship with a married man, Hubert Dumas, with whom she had a son, Fabrice. But Mr. Dumas left her in 1952.

She married Emile Maze, another musician, in 1958. He died in 1974. She and her son are survived by two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Even after she retired in 1984, Ms. Maze continued to play four or more hours a day. Her son later began encouraging her to record an album, to capture both her talents and the influence of Mr. Cortot’s unique methods.

Her first album, a recording of Debussy’s preludes, was released in 2004, the year she turned 90. Three more Debussy albums followed, as well as three others with music by different composers: “104 Years of Piano” (2018), “105 Years of Piano” (2019) and “109 Years of Piano” (2023).

As her discography grew, so did public curiosity, which turned to praise as critics praised her technique and her supple interpretations of not only Debussy but also Robert Schumann and Erik Satie, as well as more modern composers such as Astor Piazzolla and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

She found even more fame in 2020, then she went to Facebook to share upbeat comments daily during the darkest days of the pandemic. As restrictions eased, fans flocked to her home, from as far away as Japan, to request a short lesson.

“I always preferred composers who gave me tenderness,” she told NPR in 2021. “Music is an affective language, a poetic language. Music contains everything: nature, emotion, love, rebellion, dreams; it is like spiritual food.”