Wilhelm Kempff - Schumann: Piano works (2007)

4 CDS: This set offers a broad selection of Schumann's piano masterpieces, with all of thequintessentially romatic collections of miniatures such as Papillons, Carnaval, Davidsbundlertanze, Kinderszenen and Kreisleriana as well as the great Fantasy in C Major, piano sonata No.2 and the virtuoso Symphonic Studies.

This DG Collectors Edition 4-CD set brings together a significant number of Schumann’s solo piano works, recorded at the Hannover Beethovensaal between 1967 and 1972. The great Schumann keyboard works–Carnaval, the Symphonic Studies, Kreisleriana, Waldszenen, Papillons, the second piano sonata, and Davidsbündlertänze–are all included, along with a fair helping of smaller occasional pieces that occupy discs 3 and 4. As to the performances, Wilhelm Kempff brings to Schumann a focused intellectual logic, the fruit of many years devoted not just to studying the notes, but also to assimilating the composer’s cultural and spiritual ethos. To many collectors, the accounts heard here will seem an ideal fusion of everything that the capricious, improvisatory, introspective, and rhapsodic musical personality of this composer is supposed to represent, and Kempff knew better than most how to bring out the multi-faceted paradox that Schumann liked to describe as the “Florestan” and “Eusebius” aspects of his character.

It’s in the big works, especially Carnaval and Kreisleriana, that you’ll notice just how marvellously Kempff could inflect and mould this music. Try the Chopin (XII) or Paganini (XVII) scenes of the former, or the concluding “March of the Davidsbündler against the Philistines”, and you’ll discover playing that’s rigorously disciplined but always flexible and imaginative enough to powerfully propel Schumann’s fleeting ideas. The same goes for Kempff’s wonderfully long-breathed architectural mastery of the Symphonic Studies, in which the greatest imaginable contrasts of touch (No. 5), dynamic shading (No. 11), and attack (No. 6) are offered against a boldly-etched, rhythmically taut backdrop that never lets the listener forget that the keyword here really is “symphonic”. It’s an exceptionally fine reading, and arguably the high-point of this distinguished set. At mid-price, this collection has precious few serious rivals. Even if the sound isn’t quite as good as we take for granted these days, that’s only a minor drawback.