Wilhelm Backhaus, Wiener Philarmoniker, Karl Böhm - Johannes Brahms - Piano Concertos 1 & 2 (1989)

As an eleven-year-old in 1895, Wilhelm Backhaus met and performed for D'Albert, Grieg, Nikisch and Brahms, among others. Here was a pianist who shunned hectoring gestures of the late Romantic era for economy and purposefulness. "His facial expression always remained steady, showing an unceasing concentration on the sounds his hands were coaxing from the instrument with such concentrated energy. Everything lay in the act of playing, just as the preoccupation of a great painter or sculptor would be not with technique as such, but with craftsmanship - that is, skill not as an end in itself, but as a vehicle for the idea - giving pleasure to those who were able to watch and hear how a true master would execute even difficult passages effortlessly," writes Walter Frei. This 2-CD set brings together Backhaus's recordings with Karl Bohm and the Vienna Philharmonic of the two Brahms Piano Concertos.