Wilhelm Kempff - Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 (2015) [Hi-Res]

„Miracles cannot be willed; they are things of chance, the products of the creative imagination, spontaneous and loving, intuited not made. Which is what I mean when I say that Kempff's Beethoven playing is one of our great modern miracles. More self-forgetful than any great pianist I know, Kempff greets the music with spontaneous delight and, greeting it, never for a moment tries to fix it. In Kempff's playing, mind and imagination, wit and fantasy, long-term concentration and smiling delight in the briefest brushed innuendo, sit happily side by side, perfectly fused.' (Gramophone)

„Wilhelm Kempff was one of the great German pianists of the postwar period, and his two sets of Beethoven sonatas remain a standard by which all others are measured. He was not a flashy artist, nor was he grimly severe. Rather, he practiced a sort of natural eloquence of expression that made his Beethoven one of the most satisfying over the long haul. Individual moments may rarely leap out and grab you, but his performances leave a satisfying impression of completeness, as if no stone has been left unturned. These performances have been highly regarded since the early 1960s, and with good reason. They offer an admirable picture of Kempff as an artist, and the accompaniments are quite fine.“ (David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com)

„. . . none is more poetic or more spiritually searching than Wilhelm Kempff in his 1961 recording. Alfred Brendel . . . said that, for Kempff , 'cantabile was the essence of music'. You can hear what he meant in this performance, where his tone never loses its luminous, singing quality . . . memorable are the qualities of fantasy and musing inwardness in Kempff's playing . . . If you own just one Beethoven concerto disc, this should be it.“ (Richard Wigmore, Daily Telegraph, UK)

Wilhelm Kempff, piano
Berliner Philharmoniker
Ferdinand Leitner, conductor

Recorded July 1961 at UFA-Studio, Berlin, Germany
Engineered by Werner Wolf
Produced by Otto Gerdes

Digitally remastered