courtesy of Naxos of America
Back in 2017 I wrote an article about the efforts of Appian Publications & Recordings (APR) to remaster 78 RPM recordings of German pianist Wilhelm Kempff made between 1925 and 1943 (both before and during World War II). All of those recordings involved performances of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, both concertos and sonatas. Where the concertos were concerned, information about anyone other than Kempff was a sometime thing, particularly in the earliest remastered recordings. Apparently, those documenting these performances were only interested in the soloist.
Earlier this month APR released its latest CD of solo piano performances by Kempff. This is the first APR release that does not involve Kempff playing Beethoven. Rather, these are recordings of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, and Robert Schumann, all originally released by Polydor between 1927 and 1936 (the same time-frame as that of the earlier releases).
As his career matured, the focus of Kempff’s attention gradually expanded from Beethoven to Schubert. Thus, after World War II, when Kempff was recording for Deutsche Grammophon (DG), he became one of the earliest pianists to provided a recorded account of all of Schubert’s solo piano sonatas (bearing in mind that the semantics of “all” has gone through a fair number of changes thanks to progress in Schubert scholarship). Sadly, Polydor was not as adventurous as Kempff when it came to exploring the Schubert repertoire. As a result, this new album of remastered recordings accounts for Schubert through only two of the movements from the D. 780 collection entitled Moments musicaux and the third (in the key of B-flat major) of the four impromptus collected as D. 935. There is also a recording of the D. 889 serenade, which amounts to Kempff’s arrangement of Liszt’s previous arrangement of the Schubert song.
The composer that received the most attention on this new release is Bach. However, the only composition to be given a complete account is the BWV 816 “French” suite in G major. The BWV 971 “Italian” concerto in F major is represented only by its first movement, while The Well-Tempered Clavier is represented by only two prelude-fugue couplings from Book I: C-sharp minor and D major. (The D major pairing was recorded twice, once in 1928 and again in 1931.) Finally, there are four Kempff transcriptions of Bach works that were not originally composed for keyboard.
Mozart fares somewhat better with a complete account of the K. 331 piano sonata in A major. However, this is a case where APR has to compete with their own “product.” In January of 2021, I wrote about the APR release of its final album of recordings by Wilhelm Backhaus entitled The complete 1940s studio recordings. The recording of K. 331 was made after World War II in March of 1948. Given his relationship with Adolf Hitler, Backhaus probably had to go through a de-Nazification process, after which he would have been cleared to participate in recording sessions with HMV. Under the circumstances, it may surprise some that, having jumped through all of those hoops, Backhaus still knew how to capture Mozart’s prankish spirit; but, in my own opinion, that (hopefully sincere) disposition has it hands-down over the recording that Kempff made for Polydor in 1935.
What remains on the Kempff album are two very brief excerpts from two of Robert Schumann’s “cyclic” suites. The first of these is the “Aufschwung” movement from the Opus 12 Fantasiestücke, followed by the more familiar “Träumerei” from the Opus 15 Kinderszenen. Given that Kempff moved on to DG after the War, I would not be surprised if this new APR release will be the last one devoted to him. Personally, in spite of the historical significance, my Kempff preferences remain with his approaches to Beethoven.
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