The Scarlatti sonatas come from the first studio recording Gilels made for the BBC, in 1957. That was also the year he returned to London for the first time as a soloist in his own right, as opposed to someone sharing a billing with other State-approved Soviet artists who had travelled here, one used to feel, to be on exhibition to the Western public. From then on, Gilels had a broadcasting career here that lasted until 1984, the year before his death. In those halcyon days, international visitors as well as home-grown performers were regularly invited to play programmes specially for the BBC, and until recently the BBC Sound Archive was being continually restocked with such products, many of them carefully crafted and representing players at the top of the profession as well as those with big careers still to make. This selection from Gilels’s 1957 broadcast and his next one in 1959 is admirably documented and presented. And having heard the original (mono) tapes, I’m nicely placed to be appreciative of the sensitively remastered sound.
The mature Gilels is everywhere apparent. In the Scarlatti and Bach his stance seems to me as ideal as in the Schumann and the Russians. The light and shade in the bouquet of five sonatas are delightful, the virtuoso ones as clean as a whistle and as musically vibrant as the rest; while in the Bach (an unusual choice) his undemonstrative and more distant but not impersonal manner conveys the feeling of an object perceived, loved and understood. In everything you sense a personality at ease with itself and with the matter in hand and a mechanism and musical control that seem to be looking after themselves. He played the F sharp minor Sonata of Schumann a good deal, but it wasn’t a piece often encountered in this country in 1959 and hardly ever in a performance such as this which picks you up at the beginning and takes you on a fantastic journey. Gilels makes you aware that Schumann’s fiery urgency and passion in the two big quick movements are not a surface, or there just to provide thrills and general agitation, but are part of the detailed character of the music. I always feel it is wrong to ascribe the excitement of his playing to nervous energy alone, which is a commodity plenty of pianists have. You note that even in the Prokofiev Toccata he remains pleasing for his more interesting qualities, and above all for his sensibility.
I’m sure one shouldn’t regard him and his contemporary, Sviatoslav Richter, as rivals for our admiration – how lucky we were to have had both! – but perhaps the greatness of Gilels may not have been fully recognized in his lifetime because he was sometimes obliged to live in Richter’s shadow, and maybe it is still not so.'