Wilhelm Kempff - Schumann- Piano Concerto (1953/2024) [Official Digital Download]

Born and raised in Vienna, Josef Krips trained as a choirboy and studied with Felix Weingartner, who then hired him as a repetiteur at the Volksoper. He his debut there in 1921, before graduating to the Vienna State Opera in 1933. In the aftermath of the Second World War, it was Krips above all who reformed and re-trained the State Opera as a world-class ensemble, and in the most difficult conditions. His pragmatism and understated authority made him a model recording conductor, and Decca hired him to work with orchestras in several of their centres of activity.

Mozart was forever Krips’s hero: ‘My maxim is that everything has to sound as though it were by Mozart, or it will be a bad performance. When you perform Mozart, everything has to be crystal clear, everything has to be in balance and everything has to have a relaxed sound.’

Compiled here for the first time, as one of a two-volume Krips edition, are the conductor’s complete mono recordings for Decca beginning with Kingsway Hall sessions in October 1947. Mozart symphonies, concertos, overtures and arias appeared on 78s – newly transferred for this set by Andrew Hallifax. From the early LP era comes the first-ever complete recording of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, with a cast entirely drawn from the Vienna State Opera company, and (also from 1950) a remarkably forward-looking account of the Requiem, recorded with a cathedral-style all-male chorus including boys on the top line, much closer to Mozart’s world than contemporary, symphonic-style versions of the piece.

Combined with Decca’s famous ‘ffrr’ sound, these Mozartian qualities also illuminate Krips’s mono recordings of symphonies by Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert, concertos by Schumann and Dvořák, Johann Strauss waltzes and a version of Mendelssohn’s Elijah which combines the best of the British oratorio tradition with an operatic momentum and a gently glowing orchestral palette.

Distinguished soloists on these recordings include Clifford Curzon and Mischa Elman in Mozart; Zara Nelsova in Dvořák’s Cello Concerto; and Hilde Gueden, Maria Reining, Anton Dermota and Richard Lewis singing opera arias (recorded on 78, several receiving their first digital transfer in this box).

TRACKLIST

1. Wilhelm Kempff - I. Allegro affettuoso
2. Wilhelm Kempff - II. Intermezzo. Andantino grazioso
3. Wilhelm Kempff - III. Allegro vivace



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