Walter Gieseking

[Atriod]

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8022254--walter-gieseking-1933-1947

This is an excellent Gieseking recording

Re the APR stuff, I'd be interested to know what people make of the Chopin on this one

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8034666--walter-gieseking-the-complete-homocord-recordings-and-other-rarities

I listened to the full Homocord set twice all the way through a while back as Gieseking in good transfers is not common. My impression of it was Gieseking just reading sheet music in single takes; there was virtually no interpretation. I posted that to another thread on another board discussing the Warner box set and someone that had the Warner box set said the same of the Homocord recordings. Overall there is more Gieseking that has left me unimpressed than impressed, but I keep coming back because of the greatest performance of the Tempest Sonata I've heard and a lesser extent the 1930s Debussy Preludes cycle.

Josef Hofmann is another pianist I can't listen to often for similar reasons (some exceptions where he sounds truly inspired), but at least with Hofmann you're treated to superhuman pianism.

[Mandryka]

I listened to the full Homocord set twice all the way through a while back as Gieseking in good transfers is not common. My impression of it was Gieseking just reading sheet music in single takes; there was virtually no interpretation. I posted that to another thread on another board discussing the Warner box set and someone that had the Warner box set said the same of the Homocord recordings. Overall there is more Gieseking that has left me unimpressed than impressed, but I keep coming back because of the greatest performance of the Tempest Sonata I've heard and a lesser extent the 1930s Debussy Preludes cycle.

 Gieseking's great strength is to do with making a sort of sweep of the music - it's as if the music sounds like a single thought from start to end of a movement. In the earlier recordings the result can be a feeling that the music is being created for the first time. Fresh and radiant music making.

[prémont]

Except for a small part of Gieseking's Mozart and Debussy I only know his Bach and Beethoven. Generally I agree with Atriod's remark about sight reading. Though some of Gieseking's Beethoven is worth a listen, but it is years since I listened to it.

[Atriod]

Except for a small part of Gieseking's Mozart and Debussy I only know his Bach and Beethoven. Generally I agree with Atriod's remark about sight reading. Though some of Gieseking's Beethoven is worth a listen, but it is years since I listened to it.

His incomplete EMI Beethoven cycle is very good, I like it. I place it in the same tier as Pollini's cycle and like Pollini my main complaints about it are coming off as a bit cool in places, rushes some phrases that you'd wish would be played with a bit more tenderness, etc. But when I'm in the mood for Pollini or Gieseking in Beethoven they'll really satisfy. Gieseking plays with some imagination, just like Pollini. The Tempest Sonata that I like so much predates this cycle, it's from 1931. I have never heard a single pianist throw caution to the wind in this piece like he does, the closest I could think of would be if Rzewski stepped into a time machine. Sort similarly to how Pollini's recent recording of Debussy Preludes Book II had really blown me away; it's the complete opposite of the type of interpretations I really love (Michelangeli, Sasaki, Osborne, Ericourt, Beroff) and Pollini's tempos are too brisk. But the way he phrases things, lets the left hand thunderously echo for the briefest moments, all add up to something that sounds pretty inspired to me.

I liked Gieseking enough that I went out of my way to find the original Japan issued set which doesn't have the noise reduction of the regular US/European CDs that came out after it. This was many years before the Complete Warner box set came out and I have no idea how these performances sound in that box.



I had the 4 or 5 CD Gieseking DG Bach box, I don't think I made it through it all even once. Just unimaginative.

[Mandryka]

Well some high points given that I'm not interested in concertos or Beethoven - Ravel, Grieg, Mendelssohn, Scriabin, 1949 op 111, Chopin op 15/2, Mozart K533, 1938 Chopin Barcarolle, Schumann Symphonic Etudes on the " previously unissued" performances on Music and Arts, Schumann DBT, possibly late Brahms, possibly Bach English Suites.  I never really listen to the Debussy (not for any good reason probably), and I would like to get to know his Mozart solo better.