Many readers probably know by now that I have had a fair amount on interested in the recordings of performances by the Austrian pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda, who was born in Vienna on May 16, 1930 and died in Steinbach am Attersee (also in Austria) on January 27, 2000. I first became aware of him during my graduate student years, when the Musical Heritage Society released a box set of his performances of all 32 published piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. More recently, the release of five albums of his performances based on remastered tapes recorded by Südwestrundfunk (SWR, southwest broadcasting), the public radio service for the southwest of Germany, served as a major factor in keeping me occupied under pandemic conditions.
courtesy of Naxos of America
All five of those albums were released on the SWR>>music label early in 2021, and they provided a rich profile of how Gulda approached the compositions that he brought into his repertoire. Ironically, a much more different profile of Gulda was made available a little over a month ago when the Profil (yes!) label released a six-CD collection entitled The Young Friedrich Gulda. The earliest of the recordings was made when the pianist was in his late teens in London in December of 1948. At the other end is a collection of recordings made in September and October of 1957 accounting for Beethoven’s Opus 13 (“Pathétique”) piano sonata and selected compositions by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. By way of perspective, those last recordings predate his Beethoven sonata project by about a decade.
Readers may have observed that this “biographical” (scare quotes intended) account overlooks entirely the years of World War II. This was a period when Gulda first cultivated interest in jazz. This was a bold move, since he was living under Nazi occupation and the government had prohibited such music being played. Nevertheless, he and his friend Joe Zawinul were rambunctious teenagers, who relished venturing into “forbidden” territory. (Hopefully, some readers will associate Zawinul’s name with either Weather Report or recordings he made with Miles Davis.) This side of Gulda’s interests was documented in the third of the SWR>>music albums, which consisted of recordings made at the 1971 Heidelberger Jazztage.
However, while Gulda was not afraid to be adventurous during the War, his early ventures into recording were, for the most part, dutifully straightforward. The single CD devoted to Beethoven piano sonatas comes across as preparation for his complete-sonatas project. It is complemented by the other First Viennese School CD devoted to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, coupling the K. 576 sonata in D major with two piano concertos, K. 503 in C major and K. 537 in D major, both performed with the New Symphony Orchestra in London, conducted by Anthony Collins. There is also a single CD for Frédéric Chopin, which pairs the four ballades with the first piano concerto, Opus 11 in E minor, this time with Adrian Boult conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
The composer that received the most attention is Claude Debussy. One CD is devoted to both of the Préludes books, and the following CD begins with Suite bergamasque, the Pour le piano suite, and “L’isle joyeuse.” The remainder of that second CD is devoted to Maurice Ravel, beginning with the Valses nobles et sentimentales collection, followed by the finger-busting Gaspard de la nuit suite, and concluding with the more modest sonatina.
The other symphonic offerings are Carl Maria von Weber’s Opus 79 “Konzertstück” in F minor and Richard Strauss’ “Burleske” in D minor. Gulda performs the Weber with Volkmar Andrae conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. The Strauss offering is again conducted by Collins, this time leading the London Symphony Orchestra. It is preceded by a selection of thirteen Strauss songs with Gulda accompanying soprano Hilde Güden.
This makes for an impressive span of diversity for a young up-and-coming pianist. If the interpretations tend to the conventional side, that is probably because Gulda was still “testing the waters.” Nevertheless, there is much to draw attention to his keyboard talents in this collection, even if the more adventurous side of those talents had yet to emerge.
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