There are great piano records, and there are great piano records. One thinks of Horowitz toying with Czerny (RCA, 11/91), Barere racing through the Rapsodie espagnol (APR, 12/85 – nla), Friedman storming the Revolutionary Study (reissued on Pearl) or Lipatti igniting Ravel’s “Alborado del gracioso” (see below). Listen to any of them, and the musical message emerges loud and clear. With Wilhelm Backhaus, however, casual listening runs the risk of prompting a vacant “what’s so special?”. True, Backhaus’s technique was often impressive, but his manner of playing could be cavalier, metronomic, impatient or wilful. He was never one to splash on the perfume or cajole with seductive rubato, neither was he an especially ‘intellectual’ interpreter. Generally speaking, he made his points without ceremony or fuss. It was an approach that could, when he was on form, make for a life-enhancing musical confrontation. Here, he was definitely on form.
The Beethoven sonatas were recorded live at Carnegie Hall, released on LP in America, but never issued in the UK. The contemporaneous encores enjoyed a brief life-span here on a 10-inch Decca LP, but have never reappeared since. They are, in a word, wonderful. Backhaus improvises his way between pieces – ‘meandering modulation’ I would call it – from a relaxed but darkly etched Schubert A flat Impromptu to Schumann’s “Warum?” (such translucent inner voices), a gemutlich Soiree de Vienne, idiosyncratic but unexpectedly delicate Chopin and a boisterous account of Brahms’s breezy little Intermezzo, Op. 117 No. 3. The studio-recorded Brahms concerto, although occasionally slipshod, is strong on impulse and passion, especially in the first movement (try the gnarled first solo statement of the principal second set, at 6'17''). Carl Schuricht shared Backhaus’s bald interpretative aesthetic; the Vienna Philharmonic play beautifully, and I would count this recording as more forceful than Backhaus’s Decca stereo remake (now out on Decca’s The Classic Sound), and more characterful than his Saxon State/EMI 78s (1/98 – both are conducted by Bohm). The sound is fairly good, though the piano tends towards muddiness and the strings are a mite wiry.
As to the sonatas, any of the five performances would serve as an ideal introduction to Backhaus’s Beethoven style. The recordings have a bright, ringing quality that contrasts with the warmer sound-frame favoured for the Decca stereo studio sessions. One might expect the performances to live more dangerously than their studio counterparts, and indeed the Pathetique’s strongly accented first movement makes the point in no uncertain terms. Some ‘old-fashioned’ devices will divide critical sympathies, split chords being one (that is, stepping on to a chord via its lowest component) and expressive speed changing, another. Try the reprise of the Pathetique’s first-movement second subject 1'36'' into the first movement, or listen to the way Backhaus subtly broadens the return of the finale’s principal theme, at 1'12'' into track 3.
The Tempest Sonata is more patrician than elemental, although, in the finale, even Backhaus cannot match the artful ebb and flow of Frederic Lamond. Les adieux runs the gamut from gentle regret to joyful release: no other pianist that I know of makes such a dizzying display of the finale, and neither of Backhaus’s more familiar commercial recordings can compare with this one for spontaneity. The delightful little G major Sonata, Op. 79, is given with infectious aplomb (how sensible to have programmed it at the beginning of the second disc, as the ‘first’ encore), while the last Sonata of all, Op. 111, triumphs by dint of its sincerity and emotional directness. Backhaus’s late Beethoven avoids the heavenly distensions of Schnabel, Barenboim, Kovacevich or Ernst Levy (whose remarkable Op. 111 is available on Marston), preferring instead greater mobility and pianistic plain speaking. One senses impulsiveness more than impatience, and the sum effect is extraordinarily moving.
Being live, these performances are rarely note-perfect. Being Backhaus, they lack the subtle reflexes that characterize, say, the best of Brendel or Kempff. But their compensating rigour and vitality should elicit appreciation from every perceptive listener. I would say, in closing, that if pressed to select a representative sampling of Backhaus at his best, I would vote this superb set as the ideal candidate. It truly is “the Essential Backhaus”.'