For many decades the orchestras of the German broadcasting service SWR have worked together with many famous musicians from all over the world, including the outstanding pianists selected for this collection, among them Clara Haskil, Jörg Demus, Paul Badura-Skoda, Alicia de Larrocha, Wilhelm Backhaus, and Géza Anda. Furthermore, Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau (1903–1991) is regarded as one of the supreme keyboard masters of the 20th century and must feature in any comparative survey of performances of the central repertoire from Beethoven to Brahms. Annie Fischer (1914–1995), a pupil of Ernst von Dohnányi later went on to make some legendary recordings with Otto Klemperer. Friedrich Gulda (1930–2000) polarized the music scene by embracing the parallel worlds of classical music and jazz in equal measure. He was not only one of the most brilliant pianists of the 20th century with regard to tone and technique, but also one of the wittiest and most musically competent. For decades Wilhelm Kempff (1895–1991) was seen as the leading interpreter of German music from Beethoven and Schubert through Schumann and Liszt to Brahms.

Friedrich Gulda was born in Vienna on May 16, 1930. He began his musical education at the Grossmann Conservatory and subsequently took private lessons from Felix Pazofsky. From 1942 to 1947 he studied piano at the Vienna Academy of Music under Bruno Seidlhofer and Music Theory and Composition under Joseph Marx. He gave his first public performance in 1944 and, two years later when just 16 years old, won the Geneva International Music Competition. Starting after the Second World War, as a 20-year-old, Gulda established himself as a piano soloist with an excellent international reputation and even performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1950. In the 1950s he was celebrated and considered the leading interpreter of Beethoven in his generation. He founded his own Klassische Orchester Gulda for chamber music with members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

In addition to Beethoven, Gulda’s repertoire encompasses works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Franz Schubert, Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel and Richard Strauss, whose Burleske in D minor and lieder are included in this release, with Gulda accompanying soprano Hilde Güden. Gulda was essentially an out-and-out contrarian who showed that a great genius can sometimes be only a step away from a certain madness. While Karl Böhm or Rubinstein admired him as a magnificently talented interpreter of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, Gulda could also be provocative – including inciting his fellow concert pianists. Asked about Vladimir Horowitz, Gulda once responded: “Horowitz is a master. Because he is able to do – whatever he wants,” but also added: “But what he is after doesn’t interest me” (Joachim Kaiser).

REVIEW:
Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) was certainly never a conformist pianist. But he was less flamboyant in his youth than in his later years, and he did present new perspectives at the beginning of his career, which helped to provoke a change in thinking. The recordings in this CD box set date from this period.

He recorded the freshly perky Mozart Sonata K. 576 in 1948, and both Concertos K. 503 and 537 in 1955 with the New Symphony Orchestra under Anthony Collins. Gulda’s fresh yet nuanced playing compensates for the weak orchestra’s playing. The Beethoven sonatas Nos. 4, 7, 8 and 19 show the still searching Gulda of 1955 on his way to the 1967 complete recording. The 3rd CD includes the concerto piece by Carl Maria von Weber and the Strauss Burlesque, as well as a set of Strauss songs that Gulda recorded with Hilde Güden in 1956. These are wonderful interpretations of rare freshness and suppleness. Güden’s silvery timbre and her confidently controlled, light vocal line coupled with Gulda’s spontaneous and sensitive playing make for an uncommonly natural performance.

Recorded in 1954, Chopin’s compositions, the 4 Ballades and the 1st Piano Concerto, are among Gulda’s ‘immortal’ recordings. In the 1st Piano Concerto, Gulda collaborates with the more traditional Adrian Boult, but it is precisely the contrast in temperament that leads to special tension and dynamics. This recording has been available several times on various labels, but here it definitely sounds in the best quality so far. Also very exciting are the four ballads, which he plays dramatically and narratively.

Debussy and Ravel, the composers represented on CDs Nos. 5 and 6 of this box, have been Gulda’s recurring preoccupation. The early recordings from 1953 and 1955 may not yet be as stylistically tested on the hard, sharp and pithy of jazz as the late recordings, but their analytically modern style, with clear, precise lines and contours and good transparency, shows the intellectual brilliance of these interpretations.

The bottom line is that this encounter with the young Gulda is a very important one that should help one understand the older musician and could help bring respect to Gulda among those who did not appreciate his later work as much.

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“The complete violinist” Benjamin Schmid inspires both audiences and international critics in the field of jazz and improvisation. For his latest album “Jazz Violin Concertos” with the Swedish chamber orchestra Musica Vitae; Schmid presents jazz violin concertos written by Austrian composers. Friedrich Gulda’s Violin Concerto entitled “Wings” is conceived as a single large violin cadenza with orchestra; which lacks not only virtuoso but also groovy parts. Herbert Berger’s “Metropoles Suite” was adapted for violin by the composer for Benjamin Schmid; each of the movements “Insomnia”; “El largo adios”; “A la minute” and “Avenida” can be assigned to a metropolis. “Three Songs for an Abandonend Angel” by the Austrian jazz pianist and composer Sabina Hank was also written for Schmid.