In 1970, when DG issued their bicentenary Beethoven Edition, Wilhelm Kempff’s cycle of the piano sonatas, completed only five years previously, was the only possible choice. I am glad that in 1997 it remains the choice, when with the sound noticeably improved – not just over the original shallow-sounding LPs but over the earlier CD issue – Kempff’s insight remains unsurpassed.
It was only last year (4/96) that I did a detailed study, setting both of Kempff’s cycles, the mono as well as this stereo set, against Schnabel’s equally authoritative but strongly contrasted cycle, yet once again the magic of Kempff leaves me in wonder, his magnetism, his unfailing sense of spontaneity, his ability to clarify textures with astonishingly clean articulation and sharp dynamic contrasts, and not least his lyrical flow, with extreme speeds generally avoided. I suppose that Barenboim’s DG cycle might have been chosen instead, but that is more effortful, less spontaneous than his superb earlier EMI set, and would have been disappointing compared with this.
It is good, too, that the couplings this time – on eight discs instead of nine for the earlier CD issue – follow those for the Kempff centenary issue of his mono set on DG Dokumente (4/96). Kempff may be erratic over observing exposition repeats, but the magnetism, the sense of live communication is what matters. Broadly, the mono cycle is even more personal than this, freer in expressiveness, and particularly in the earlier sonatas that often brings extra sparkle – as for example in the rippling finale of Op. 2 No. 3 – but I have been struck, as I was in my survey last year, by the extra intensity of the late sonatas in the stereo cycle here: sharp, clean attack set against sublime lyricism, which with Kempffian logic leads on to Schubert.'