Wilhelm Kempff - Edition (80 CD)

Celebrating Wilhelm Kempff’s incredible legacy on Deutsche Grammophon with over 92 hours of stunning performances, curated in four chapters: Concerto Recordings, Chamber Music, Solo Repertoire, Shellac Recordings;

• 6 CDs with rare shellac recordings – first release on Deutsche Grammophon
• 160pp booklet featuring: New informative liner notes by Gregor Wilmes & Original photos

MORE INFORMATION

Includes recordings with Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Yehudi Menuhin, Pierre Fournier, Henryk Szeryng, Pablo Casals, Ferdinand Leitner, Bernhard Klee, Rafael Kubelík, Paul van Kempen, Karl Münchinger, Josef Krips, Anatole Fistoulari, and more.

ABOUT THE APR RECORDINGS : Over his 60-year recording career, Wilhelm Kempff never relented in his quest for perfection. Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata, for example, was committed to disc at least nine times! Keeping up with and documenting all this activity was never easy for his record companies, and many original sources - including nearly all those from the shellac era - no longer exist in Deutsche Grammophon’s master archive. So to provide as comprehensive an overview of Kempff’s recording career as possible, DG have licensed a legendary nearly-complete Beethoven cycle from the shellac era (1925-43) from APR (transfer engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn) as a comparison with Kempff’s later complete mono and stereo LP cycles also included in the box. The edition concludes with Kempff’s very first shellac disc for Deutsche Grammophon, of Beethoven’s C major Bagatelle op.33/5, where he can faintly be heard exclaiming “Donnerwetter”(“Dammit”) when his finger strikes two notes instead of one.

TRACK LIST

The Concerto Recordings: (14CDs)
Beethoven: Piano Concertos; Mozart: Piano Concertos; Schumann: Piano Concerto, Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1; Liszt: Piano Concerto

Chamber Music: (14 CDs)
Beethoven: Sonatas for Piano and Violin with Wolfgang Schneiderhan and with Yehudi Menuhin
Beethoven: Sonatas for Piano and Violoncello with Pierre Fournier
Beethoven: Trios with Pierre Fournier and Henryk Szeryng
Plus recordings with Pablo Casals, Georg Kulenkampff, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

Solo Repertoire: (46 CDs)
Works by: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Händel, Liszt, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann including complete Schubert Sonatas and two complete Beethoven Sonata cycles

Shellac Recordings (6 CDs):
Beethoven: Sonatas – Recorded 1920, 1925, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1941, 1943