Australian Decca has released eight double-CD sets featuring Julius Katchen in his complete recorded repertoire. Volume One is given over to most of the late pianist’s Beethoven Concerto cycle (No. 4 and the Choral Fantasy are held over for Volume Two). Recorded in the early 1960s, this cycle faced serious rivalry from such diverse and arguably more compelling Beethovenians as Fleisher/Szell, Arrau/Haitink, and Kempff/Leitner. The boomy resonance, moreover, yielded to the more compact, detailed sonics proffered by Decca’s rivals both stateside and on the continent. Time hasn’t altered these perspectives at all. Nevertheless, Katchen’s untrammeled virtuosity and avoidance (for the most part) of Germanic rigor were easier to take than the rhetorical baggage weighing down the Barenboim/Klemperer versions. While I prefer Fleisher’s angularity and harmonic underlining in the first two concertos, I’m moved by the introspection with which Katchen embraces the C minor and “Emperor” concertos’ slow movements. The perky Rondo in B-flat, on the other hand, inspires more pointed, less generalized podium work from Piero Gamba and the London Symphony, along with Katchen’s dashing generosity. These may not be anyone’s first choice among Beethoven concertos, yet how poorer we’d be without them.
