MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: MDT AmazonUK

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]

Experience Classicsonline


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  

Masterwork Index: Beethoven piano concertos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Error processing SSI file



Error processing SSI file