Gulda Remastered: Two 1959 Recitals

courtesy of Naxos of America

Readers may recall that the first of the five albums of performances by the Austrian pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda involved seven CDs of solo recitals performed between 1966 and 1979 almost entirely in Stuttgart, mostly in the Mozartsaal of the Liederhalle. All of the content was based on remastered tapes recorded by Südwestrundfunk (SWR, southwest broadcasting), the public radio service for the southwest of Germany. The final album, like the fourth released on the SWR>>music label a little less than two weeks ago, returns to the domain of solo recitals, presenting two, both recorded in 1959. The performances took place in palaces in the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany, Bruchsal on January 29 and Schwetzingen on June 3. As is the case for the fourth album in the series, Amazon.com has created a Web page for the physical release; but downloading the tracks from a Presto Classical Web page is probably preferable.

Of the three CDs in this final release, the first two account for the Bruchsal performance. Gulda prepared an imaginative program of symmetries within symmetries with the two CDs presumably separated by the intermission he took. The first CD is devoted to sonatas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (K. 333 in B-flat major) and Ludwig van Beethoven (the second, in the key of D minor, of the Opus 31 sonatas, known as “The Tempest”). The second CD then couples three short pieces by Claude Debussy with Maurice Ravel’s three-movement suite Gaspard de la nuit. For his encore selection Gulda returned to Beethoven with the first of WoO 83 collection of six écossaises in E-flat major.

The Schwetzingen recital begins with Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 992 “Capriccio on the departure of a beloved brother.” This is followed by two selections by Joseph Haydn, the Hoboken XVII/6 set of variations on an andante theme in F minor and the Hoboken XVI/52 sonata in E-flat major. Presumably there would then have been an intermission, after which Gulda played two Beethoven sonatas, the second, in the key of G major, of the Opus 14 sonatas and the Opus 110 in A-flat major.

This makes for considerable diversity, even across the contrasts of the three Beethoven sonatas. Most interesting is that this album provides the only opportunity to listen to Gulda playing Ravel, and it is hard to imagine a more challenging selection than Gaspard de la nuit. Similarly, the only prior appearance of Debussy came as an encore selection on the second album of piano concerto performances. Thus, the second CD in the set introduces the attentive listener to an aspect of Gulda’s approaches to expressiveness that had not been previously encountered in the first four albums of the SWR collection.

That said, I found myself reflecting, once again, on Gulda’s project to record of all 32 of Ludwig van Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Those sonatas dominated the repertoire of the Stuttgart solo recitals documented in the first album of the SWR series. It thus seemed suitable that the journey through all five of these releases should conclude with further reflections on those sonatas. Whether or not that focus on Beethoven influenced how Gulda performed other music (including his jazz ventures) is left for the attentive listener to decide!