![Pierre Fournier, Wilhelm Kempff - Beethoven: Cello Works (1966/2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/10/17/esf2ph66qc3tc_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Pierre Fournier, Wilhelm Kempff – Beethoven: Cello Works (1966/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:12:56 minutes | 2,60 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
“Pierre Fournier’s 1965 collaboration with Wilhelm Kempff yielded one of the greatest complete recordings of the Beethoven cello sonatas. Their account of Op. 69 epitomises the nobility and eloquence of these unparalleled interpretations, and CD transfers are remarkably spacious and detailed.” (Michael Jameson, BBC Music Magazine)
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![Wilhelm Kempff - Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-32 (1965/2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/25/x2vEjf6.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Wilhelm Kempff – Beethoven: The Complete Piano Sonatas Nos. 1-32 (1965/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 09:56:38 minutes | 11,04 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
A selection of Beethoven Piano Sonatas performed by Wilhelm Kempff, and a part of DG’s “Virtuoso” series.
Wilhelm Kempff was the premier German pianist of the postwar period, so it’s no surprise that he was considered one of the supreme interpreters of Beethoven. He recorded complete sets of the sonatas and concertos twice, and just about all the rest of the chamber music with piano as well. Kempff was a classicist by nature, and his approach to Beethoven was clear and poised rather than impulsive, but it was never lacking in sheer power or virtuosity when necessary. His last cycle of Beethoven sonatas is rightly regarded as his musical testament. Even if the mono recordings offered a few more exciting moments in a couple of works, you can’t go wrong here — there isn’t a dud in the lot.
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![Wilhelm Kempff, Berliner Philharmoniker, Ferdinand Leitner - Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 (1962/2015) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/08/25/0002894794875_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Wilhelm Kempff, Berliner Philharmoniker, Ferdinand Leitner – Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 4 & 5 (1962/2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:11:17 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
In the most beautiful of all piano concertos it isn’t the orchestra which introduces the main theme but the piano”: Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991) justified in this way his preference for Beethoven’s lyrical Fourth Concerto in G major. During his long, troublefree career, he played both the Fourth and “Emperor” Concertos all over the world, from the capital of his homeland Prussia, the Berlin of the Kaisers, to Japan and South America, from Scandinavia to Baalbek. He used to improvise the two cadenzas in the G major Concerto, employing a musical imagination that had been schooled in composition, and he made no exception when he recorded the work in July 1961, at the age of 66. This poet of pianism was accompanied by an orchestra he knew well, the Berlin Philharmonic, under the distinguished German conductor Ferdinand Leitner (born 1912). Kempff’s witty and sensitive approach reveals new subtleties in the heroic E flat major Concerto, the “Emperor”, a performance recorded at the same time as the G major that has frequently been singled out for the highest praise. The Penguin Guide has called it “perhaps the most refreshing and imaginative of all. Strength there is in plenty and excitement, too. [Kempff’s] range of tone-colour is extraordinarily wide, from the merest half-tone as though the fingers are barely brushing the keys to the crisp impact of a dry fortissimo.”
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Wilhelm Kempff – J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 (Remastered) (1970/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:03:06 minutes | 1,19 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
“Say what you will about the 75-year-old Wilhelm Kempff’s “old school” Goldberg Variations, with its unembellished Aria, seeming surface plainness, and avoidance of virtuosic sheen. However, I say that this 1970 recording remains among the most beautiful and heartfelt piano versions of Bach’s keyboard tour-de-force. Within Kempff’s straight-laced, intimate parameters you encounter the most subtle nuances, changes of color, dynamic gradations, and accents. I’ve rarely heard Variation 9’s lines (the canon at the fourth) sing out so calmly and naturally, or the three minor-key variations emerge with comparable ease, fluidity, and melodic cogency. Yet in Variation 27 (the canon at the ninth) Kempff also reveals how well he can deliver rapid, detaché playing when so inclined. Observing the A-section repeats, Kempff doesn’t embellish them so much as he refocuses voicings and balances between hands, to convincing effect. If you missed DG Galleria’s excellent 1994 digital remastering when it first appeared, get it now by way of ArkivMusic.com’s on-demand reprint program. A unique and treasurable release.” (Jed Distler, ClassicsToday)
Read more![Wilhelm Kempff - Beethoven: The 10 Violin Sonatas (2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz] Download](https://i0.wp.com/imghd.xyz/images/2022/01/25/q44e6x2scp5oa_600.jpg?resize=500%2C500&ssl=1)
Wilhelm Kempff – Beethoven: The 10 Violin Sonatas (2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 03:54:47 minutes | 2,15 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alexandre Bak – Classical Music Reference Recording
In the 1950s these recordings would have probably given a very up-to-date impression; the playing is extremely clean – there’s never a hint of sentimental violin slides or over-use of the sustaining pedal. But nearly half a century later, perhaps we’re more conscious of the old-world virtues – Schneiderhan’s beautiful legato bowing and gentle vibrato, Kempff’s full, unforced tone, and a flexible approach from both artists, with finely graded ritardandos and subtle variations of tempo.
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Wilhelm Kempff, Berliner Philharmoniker, Ferdinand Leitner – Beethoven. Piano Concertos (1961) [Japan 2019]
SACD Rip | 2x SHM-SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 171:03 minutes | Scans NOT included | 6,85 GB
or FLAC Stereo (converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/96kHz | Front, Scans NOT included | 3,4 GB
One of the 20th century’s most important pianists, Wilhelm Kempff found warmth in Beethoven where many others discovered only stress and passion. Toward the 250th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth in 2020, the Beethoven recording by master pianist Wilhelm Kemp, who also celebrate the 125th anniversary of birth in 2020, in Japan have been released these five Beethoven’s piano concertos, accompanied by the Berlin Philharmonic under Ferdinand Leitner, and these is Kemp’s second recording of complete Piano Concertos. The first was a 1953 monaural recording. For this SACD reissue have been used the DSD master made by Emil Berliner Studios in Germany from the original master tapes.
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