To celebrate the centenary last November of the birth of Wilhelm Kempff, DG offer in the Dokumente series this fascinating collection of mono recordings, most of them long unavailable and some from the age of 78rpm. With Kempff, the most inspirational of Beethoven pianists, pride of place must go to the earlier of his two sonata cycles, the one in mono. The format itself is attractive, with the eight CDs plus the bonus disc packaged in a compact box (the disc sleeves are paper), the same style that DG have chosen to adopt for Fischer-Dieskau’s Lieder collections.
Those who have cherished the 1965 DG stereo cycle (3/91) for its magical spontaneity, will find Kempff’s qualities even more intensely conveyed in this mono set, recorded between 1951 and 1956. Amazingly the sound has more body and warmth than the stereo, with Kempff’s unmatched transparency and clarity of articulation even more vividly caught, both in sparkling Allegros and in deeply dedicated slow movements. If in places he is even more personal, some might say wilful, regularly surprising you with a new revelation, the magnetism is even more intense, as in the great Adagio of the Hammerklavier or the final variations of Op. Radiography Programs In Alberta. 111, at once more rapt and more impulsive, flowing more freely. The bonus disc, entitled “An All-Round Musician”, celebrates Kempff’s achievement in words and music, on the organ in Bach, on the piano in Brahms and Chopin as well as in a Bachian improvisation, all made exceptionally transparent and lyrical. Fascinatingly, his pre-war recordings of the Beethoven sonatas on 78s are represented too. According to The World’s Encyclopaedia of Recorded Music and The Gramophone Shop Encyclopaedia he recorded 22 of the total 32.
Here we have his 1936 recording of the Pathetique, with the central Adagio markedly broader and more heavily pointed than in the mono LP version of 20 years later. The first track has the bells of the World Peace Church in Hiroshima and following this, Bach played on the organ; one can also hear Kempff’s address on the dedication of the organ in that church, the first of the five speech bands.