Rudolf Serkin - The Incomparable Rudolf Serkin (2006)

The Incomparable Rudolf Serkin is a two-disc set in a digi-pak format released in 2003 to coincide with the celebration of the great Austrian pianist's 100th birthday. The second disc in the set consists of two previously released performances, the first being Brahms' E minor Cello Sonata recorded at Kennedy Center with Mstislav Rostropovich as soloist, and the other is Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 16 in D, K. 451, with Claudio Abbado and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, made at the Grosser Saal Konzerthaus in Vienna. The first disc was wholly new at the time of release, featuring Serkin in the last three piano sonatas of Beethoven, also recorded in Vienna, this time at a live concert. He had recorded all of the music on The Incomparable Rudolf Serkin before, with some of these pieces even multiple times, although no one can argue with the desirability of hearing an artist of Serkin's caliber perform such important works based on 50 or so years of experience playing them.
Serkin made most of his best recordings during a 35-year period in which he was associated with CBS Masterworks, and in his last years acted as a sort of free agent as a recording artist. These recordings were produced during a period in the 1980s where Serkin was working with Deutsche Grammophon, and Serkin was past 80 when he recorded all of this material, save the Brahms. The Brahms demonstrates that Serkin was fully in his faculties technically and artistically at age 79, and he and Rostropovich truly make some beautiful music together. Although the piano sounds a little far away in the Mozart concerto, Serkin is likewise on his game here and delivers a poised and elegant, if not outstanding, reading of it with Abbado and the COE.
That leaves the newly released concert, an ambitious program that does not appear to have been one of his best outings -- there are numerous finger (and memory) slips throughout the three sonatas, of which the most difficult and elusive (Opus 111) results in the best performance of the night. If the Mozart is any indication of his abilities in his mid-eighties, Serkin's somewhat erratic Beethoven concert was the result of an off night rather than due to age and infirmity. From a listening standpoint though, these late Serkin performances of late Beethoven sonatas are not wholly without reward, as his warmth, expertise, and humanism are still fully apparent -- he provides a wonderful sense of overall shape and clarity to the Opus 111, a work that is the result of Beethoven at his most schizophrenic and disorganized.
Serkin truly was "incomparable"; but, The Incomparable Rudolf Serkin shows that if he did suffer by comparison, it was only to himself. On the other hand, the Brahms is truly great, and this set is very generous for the asking price, which is minimal.