Prior to his sudden death in October 1956, Walter Gieseking had completed two-thirds of a projected Beethoven Sonata cycle for EMI. These four sonatas gain reissue for the first time on CD outside of Japan and make interesting comparisons with recent reissues of the great pianist’s earlier 78 rpm and broadcast versions. First and foremost, the EMI remakes belie the oft-held notion that Gieseking’s technique declined after the war. Far from it. If anything, the rotary arpeggiated patterns dominating the outer movements of the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” are handled with greater precision and dynamic control, possibly resulting from basic tempos that are slower and more flexible yet no less headlong in their cumulative sweep. In the “Waldstein”, Gieseking now slows down for the first movement’s second subject yet manages to avoid sounding mawkish. By contrast, the slow movements are sung out in broader, more introspectively tinged phrases, showcasing Gieseking’s remarkable fingered legato technique at its finest.
Gieseking sculpts the improvisatory discourse of Op. 109’s first movement with eloquent restraint, but his glib phrasing in the Prestissimo pays little heed to Beethoven’s articulations, unlike the pianist’s more sensitively inflected 1949 broadcast (issued on Tahra 400). If you can accept Gieseking’s rather cool, facile outlook in the third movement, you’ll more readily appreciate his ravishing subtleties of touch and color, especially the evenness of the soft, rapid 16th-notes in Variation 3, and Variation 4’s clearly-etched voice leading. In terms of inward radiance and emotional depth, though, Gieseking’s EMI contemporaries Myra Hess and Solomon left more memorable accounts of this work. It’s a pity that Gieseking plows through Op. 110’s central Allegro Molto as if he were trying to catch a train, for his rapt concentration and chaste, pearly tone in the opening movement and the Arioso are totally at one with the music’s heartfelt lyricism. While Andrew Walter’s transfers sonically surpass my well-worn mono Angel LPs, the results lack the bottom end information and room tone (albeit with added tape hiss) of transfers effected for a Japanese six-disc collection devoted to Gieseking’s Beethoven. If you own the latter, hold on to it!
