Wilhelm Kempff & Beethoven

No. 323 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages, which can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast323

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As we resume our survey of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, we have four more instalments planned in the Friday Blog and Podcast. These four montages will be of the format “sonata and concerto” featuring a single pianist. This format was used inm the past for the fourth and fifth piano concerto augmented with the Moonlight, Hammerklavier and Pastoral sonatas.

This week’s pianist, Wilhelm Kempff, has famously recorded the complete cuycle of Beethoven sonatas manty times, most notably twice in the fifteen year span between 1951 and 1965 for the DG label – once in mono, the other in stereo. Today I am featuring two sonatas (the Pathétique and Waldstein) from that second “stereo” cycle. Recorded when he was in his mid-60s, this is the third and final time he recorded the complete cycle. I must admit that the reviews I’ve read of both the mono and stereo cycles (contemporaneous to each other) appears to have divided the aficionados. Some prefer the intimacy created in the first set (in particular the digitally remastered re-issue from the mid-1990s), others like the full stereo sound and projection of the latter set. We can all agree that Kempff has a vision of the sonatas that is distinctive and (dare I say) almost regal in its projection.

Same goes with the piano concerti; Kempff's 1953 Berlin cycle with Paul van Kempen has long been a collectors' item, often preferred to Kempff's famous 1960s Berlin Philharmonic/Leitner set, also on DG. Apart from Kempff's whimsical though not ineffective line in home-grown cadenzas, these are exemplary performances in matters of style and execution.

From the 1060’s set, today’s First Concerto displays the right balance of wit, glitter and dash. The stereo sound (digitally remastered) is second to none. The one-two punch of the first and second concerti (the latter featured on our next montage with a different performer) may be early in the composer’s catalog, but they do show us more than passing glimpses of Beethoven’s ingenuity for both the orchestra and the soloist.

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