Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto no. 1 in C major op. 15 (1800) [34:42]
Piano Concerto no. 2 in B flat op. 19 (1798) [27:13]
Piano Concerto no. 3 in C minor op. 37 (1803-4) [34:04]
Piano Concerto no. 4 in G major op. 58 (1805-6) [32:02]
Piano Concerto no. 5 in E flat op. 73 Emperor (1809) [39:03]
Wilhelm Kempff (piano)
NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo/Tadashi Mori
rec. April 1970, live, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Hall
KING INTERNATIONAL INC KKC 2017-19 [3 CDs: 62:20 + 66:38 + 39:03]
Wilhelm Kempff made two LP cycles of the concertos, the first with van Kempen,
with whom he was much associated on disc, and the second with Leitner. In
addition, he made a pre-war 78 recording of the Emperor Concerto in
Berlin with Raabe, and the Third and Fourth concertos with van Kempen. Both
LP cycles have their adherents and I wouldn’t be without either, though
sonically the mono van Kempen invariably cedes to the Leitner in that respect.
In artistic terms, things are very much more even.
Now here is a live, ancillary boxed collection of the concertos performed
in April 1970 in Tokyo, which therefore post-dates the stereo Leitner cycle.
It has things in its favour. The NHK was in very much better form now than
it had been in the 1950s and even the earlier 1960s when it was still a shaky
ensemble. The stereo broadcast quality is perfectly reasonable. Kempff plays
with fluency and poetry. But there are also the inevitable corollaries of
live performance, and balancing: the percussion, for instance, is aggressively
recorded. Though there is clarity and grandeur in the Emperor and a
classicist reserve in the slow movement, one senses Kempff tiring in the finale
where he makes some small slips. I suspect that this is because he had just
played the G major concerto as well that evening. Two days earlier he had
actually performed the first three concertos in one concert. This was the
kind of thing that wunderkind violinists used to do to show off their stamina
in the 1930s, but I wonder if it was reasonable to expect Kempff to do it.
That G major performance seems less impressive than Kempff’s usual high
standard. He gets through the slow movement quite briskly - in Berlin with
Leitner he had been a full minute slower and in this compact movement that’s
a telling difference. Worse, the results are curiously inexpressive for this
most poetic of players. Was he unsettled? The C minor is a good, solid Kempff
performance with, as usual, his own cadenza in the opening movement. The slow
movement is refined, the finale emphatic. Tadashi Mori (1921-87) was a good
orchestral trainer but from these results not the most thoughtful or poetic
of conductors.
The highest level of hiss comes in the First Concerto, but this performance
has freshness and enthusiasm (because it was the first to be performed, maybe?).
His lyricism and refined touch are heard at their best here and in the Second
Concerto.
This is a valuable souvenir of Kempff in Tokyo, a country he loved and where
he, too, was much loved, and esteemed. Clearly it can’t stand in the
company of the two studio cycles, which means it’s strictly for completists.
The sleeve notes, by the way, are only in Japanese.
Jonathan Woolf
A valuable souvenir of Kempff in Tokyo, but strictly for completists.
Masterwork Index: Beethoven piano concertos