Germaine Thyssens-Valentin was born in Maastricht on 27 July 1902, to a Dutch father, Jean-Jacques Thyssens, and an Alsatian mother, Jeanne Caroline Schmidt. She began the piano at about five and also studied the harpsichord, and attended the Royal Academy of Liège. She made her concert debut at eight in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23.

In 1914, at thirteen, she entered the Paris Conservatoire, then headed by Gabriel Fauré, where she studied with Isidor Philipp and later with Marguerite Long, taking first prizes in piano and in musical history in 1920.

She married Paul Valentin in December 1924 and gave up professional music to raise five children, returning to the concert platform only in 1951 after some twenty-five years away. From 1952 she appeared at the Salzburg Festival. She retired in November 1983; her final concert included Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Fauré and Debussy. She died in Paris on 7 July 1987, aged 84.

Thyssens-Valentin is remembered above all for Fauré, a composer she had a direct link to: he was director of the Paris Conservatoire when she was a student there. In 1956 she became the first pianist to perform the whole of Fauré’s piano music in a complete concert cycle, and she prepared a fingered edition of the first eight Nocturnes. In 1974 she played all thirteen Nocturnes at the Salle Gaveau.

Her recordings were made between 1956 and 1959 for Ducretet-Thomson and were later reissued by Testament; besides the Fauré they include Debussy, Franck, Mozart and Spanish songs. The Fauré Nocturnes recording received a Gramophone Award, and in a 2011 comparative review for BBC Radio 3 Stephen Plaistow judged it the finest available.

Critical opinion has consistently emphasised restraint rather than display: Bryce Morrison described her playing as distinctive, fluid, understated and of a rare tonal and poetic delicacy.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_Thyssens-Valentin