Wilhelm Kempff, who died in 1991 at the age of 95, was among the last musical emissaries of German Romanticism. Raised in the rich cultural and intellectual soil of Wilhelmine Prussia, he studied philosophy and music history at the University of Berlin while taking a diploma in piano at that city's Hochschule für Musik. As an interpreter, Kempff saw music in context. He could relate the emotional world of a Beethoven or Schubert sonata to feelings expressed in Goethe's poetry, or explain its structure using analogies drawn from classical architecture, as easily and convincingly as he could phrase a singing line at the piano.
Beauty of tone, clarity of texture, and graceful phrasing were the hallmarks of his playing, and they are much in evidence in the recordings gathered here. As in volume I and volume II of the Great Pianists series devoted to Kempff's artistry, the selection of repertoire for this two-CD set was made by Alfred Brendel, and it shows Kempff for the most part in splendid form. The Mozart concerto is vibrantly played, the two Beethoven sonatas and rondo dispatched with energy and the kind of spiritual elation that comes only from a deep affinity with the music. There is evidence aplenty of Kempff's extraordinary ear--as in the opening solo passage of the Mozart concerto, when he corrects for a slightly too-strong high C in the very next figure. He brings remarkable inner-voice detail to the Brahms and the Schumann, without sacrificing thrust in the former or a singing line in the latter.
Of special note here are the Mozart variations, recorded live in 1956 and showing a much more spontaneous side to Kempff than we are used to from his studio recordings, and the Fauré nocturne, an exquisite cameo in the French style, recorded in 1945 by the preeminent German pianist of the postwar period. --Ted Libbey
