Mention the name of Gieseking to any older keyboard aficionado, and the immediate response would probably be ‘Ah yes, the French impressionists.’ With his infinite finesse and acute sensibility, Gieseking surely had few rivals in this field – disappointingly conspicuous by its absence on these two discs. Alone, we hear him for only about 15 minutes. For the rest, we’re reminded of his collaboration with Karajan and the Philharmonia in the early 1950s, not long before his death in London in his 61st year.
Nothing better recalls his legendary limpid tone and textural translucency than the graciously lyrical opening Allegro of Mozart’s A major Concerto. Taken as an austere Adagio rather than an Andante, the slow movement seems to need some kind of ‘period’ embellishment in the aching melodic gaps of the reprise. Daredevil tempo for the finale puts the Philharmonia’s woodwind to the test – and how they rise to the occasion. In the C minor Concerto it is Karajan and the orchestra who constantly remind us of the underlying Sturm und Drang, while Gieseking, effortlessly fluent and meticulous as ever, opts to keep the work ‘free of obtrusive melancholia and drama’, as the booklet-note writer puts it.
The slow movements of Beethoven’s last two concertos similarly testify to this artist’s respect for classical simplicity and purity – unsullied, as it were, by subjective special pleading. Both are supremely eloquent in their restraint, even if the poco mosso qualifying the Adagio of the Emperor is forgotten. But I can think of no other recording of the latter work that more potently reveals the significance of Beethoven’s constant requests for pp and leggiermente, as in the first movement’s second subject’s arrival in Elysian Fields. Nor have I ever heard a more magical dissolving of sound into silence than in the diminuendo recapitulation – which in its turn arrives with sufficient strength to silence any possible thought of changing the title to the ‘Empress’. But for me the greatest tribute to Gieseking’s super-sensitive ear comes in Franck’s Symphonic Variations. I’ve rarely heard a more acute response to swift-changing moods more intimately shared between piano and orchestra than here. I only wish both could have thrown their caps to the wind more triumphantly and conclusively in the home-coming.
Of the miniatures, my only disappointment came in Chopin’s Berceuse, where, inexplicably, a poetic dream somehow emerges as factual prose. But the two Scriabin pieces (surely among his very last recordings?) again remind us of why Gieseking remains among the immortals. Excellent sound throughout, with the Philharmonia reproduced in full tonal bloom.'