Wilhelm Backhaus & Beethoven

No. 326 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages, which can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast326

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Wilhelm Backhaus  (1884 –1969), one of the pre-eminent Beethoven interpreters of his generation, is heard in today’s montage in a set of Ludwig’s sonatas and the Second concerto. Among Backhaus’ contemporaries, we count last week’s featured artist, Wilhelm Kempff, as well as other pianists we have explored in past posts – Walter Gieseking and Edwin Fischer. All of these musicians were at the height of their careers during or after World War II, yet they have seen their reputations tarnished through their association (tenuous or not) with the Nazis.

German musicians reacted to Nazism in many different ways. The pianist Elly Ney, for instance, was a rabid anti-Semite who idolized Hitler. Backhaus met Adolf Hitler by May 1933. That same year, he became executive advisor to the Nazi organization Kameradschaft der deutschen Künstler (Fellowship of German Artists). For the German elections 1936, Backhaus published a statement in the magazine Die Musikwoche which stated "Nobody loves German art, and especially German music, as glowingly as Adolf Hitler…" A month later, Hitler gave Backhaus a professorship, and invited him that September to attend the annual Nazi party's Nuremberg Rally. We note that Backhaus elected to live in Switzerland in the 1930 and never resided in Germany per se, not even during the Nazi period.

Born in Leipzig, Backhaus began learning piano at the age of four with his mother and enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory – at the urging of Arthur Nikisch, no less - where he studied from 1891 and 1899. He later perfected his training privately with Eugen d'Albert in Frankfurt. At the turn of the century, Backahuis launched into a career that would span nearly 70 years – he died in 1969 a few days before he was scheduled to perform in Austria. Even at 85 he still had the technical infallibility, which was praised by the jury of the "Anton Rubinstein Prize" when he won this once most coveted of all piano prizes (in a group that included Béla Bartók) in 1905. Back then, when the Liszt students and unrestrainedly romanticizing Beethoven interpreters Rubinstein and d'Albert set the tone, Backhaus was already a disciplined outsider, endeavoring to achieve a truly objective performance, without pomp and false solemnity.

One of the first pianists to make recordings, Backhaus had a long career not only on the concert stage but also in the studio. He recorded the complete piano sonatas and concertos of Beethoven and a large quantity of Mozart and Brahms. His recordings of the complete Beethoven sonatas, made in the 1950s and '60s, display exceptional technique for a man in his seventies. His live Beethoven recordings are in some ways even better, freer and more vivid (some of these are part of today’s montage, along with vintage recoirdings of Sonatas 22 and 28).

To complete the montage, I am featuring Backhaus’ 1952 recording of Beethoven’s Second Concerto with the Vienna Philharmonic with Clemens Krauss. Backahus would record a few years later a “stereo” version of the same concerto as part of a complete cycle with the same orchestra under Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt. Most aficionados prefer the latter performance (and set) as they feel the orchestra is more “committed” under the younger conductor and maybe the soloist is therefore more inspired. When I listen to this mono performance, I can still appreciate Backhaus’ approach and esthetic.

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