THE MOZART RECORDINGS grabbed my ear with their delicacy of touch and overall ethereal sound. This was late-night radio listening for me, a teenager in thrall to the many discoveries I was making in world of classical music. An eccentric radio host named Bill Watson purveyed the Mozart, calling particular attention to the fact that these sonatas and other keyboard works had been recorded by Walter Gieseking.
Gieseking was a unique phenomenon in the crowded world of piano virtuosos. From all accounts, his technique was impeccable, his six-feet-four body hunched close to the keyboard, the fingers seeming to move hardly at all. In his early years, his repertory was quite large, but it contracted as concert promoters grew increasingly wary of new works – a category Gieseking championed. He could sight-read anything with no mistakes, and he learned scores by studying them as an actor would study a script.
A 48-CD set issued by Warners in 2022 covered the bulk of the pianist’s studio recordings, including those works by Mozart (almost everything for solo piano), almost all of the Beethoven sonatas. He never commercially recorded No. 22 and died in 1956 before completing No. 15, although that didn’t stop EMI from tacking on someone else’s performance of the last movement. But there’s a 1951 recording of the complete sonata earlier in the set. The Warner collection, issued as Gieseking’s Complete Columbia Graphophone recordings, covers his studio output from 1923 to 1956, and is a thorough survey of his repertory, in variable but often decent sound.
Meloclassic, a label established in Germany thirteen years ago, specializes in restoration of rare recordings by significant artists. Two recent releases feature Gieseking. One of them pairs the pianist with conductor Herbert von Karajan, one of Gieseking’s favorite collaborators (although there was frequent friction between them), and is the only known live recording of the two working together. It’s a 1954 Lucerne Festival appearance by the Philharmonia Orchestra, and finds Gieseking in top form in Mozart’s Concerto No. 23. For me, that alone would be worth the price of the two-CD set, but we also get Strauss’s “Don Juan,” the program opener, and a bang-up finish with Berlioz’s “Symphonie fantastique,” one of Karajan’s signature pieces.
And note that there’s a 2019 Meloclassic two-disc set presenting three of Gieseking’s final appearances at the Hollywood Bowl, in 1955 and 1956. Concertos by Schumann, Grieg, and Rachmaninoff (No. 2) were performed alongside a generous sampling of shorter solo works.
All but one of the label’s 122 releases are single- or double-disc sets; the exception is the latest release, a magnificent collection of rare Gieseking recordings in a 26-CD (and one brief DVD) set. Many of the recordings were made for the German Reich Broadcasting Corporation (Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft) between 1933 and 1945, and even those which were previously released have been given better sound and pitch stability. They don’t, and never will, sound like recent stereo recordings, but there’s enough sonic improvement to showcase Gieseking’s interpretations well. Alongside these is a series of Australian radio broadcasts he made in 1952 and a number of private recordings at informal gatherings, proving that the pianist’s never compromised his artistry.
The Gieseking discography seems fairly extensive, although (as the biography makes clear) his concert repertory narrowed quite a bit over the years, so that his recital programs became fairly formulaic. Which means that his late-career live recordings contain plenty of duplicates. What’s nice about the Meloclassics box, at least as far as completists are concerned, is that while the repertory is often familiar to collectors, most of these sessions are unique.
Gieseking was born in 1895 in Lyon, France, to German parents, and his family moved frequently while he was young to satisfy his father’s passion for collecting butterflies. The boy developed both a facility for languages and his own interest in lepidoptera, and began teaching himself piano at the age of four. His first formal lessons took place at the Hanover Conservatory, which he entered in 1911. On the brink of launching a solo career in 1915, he was conscripted into the army in 1915 and assigned to be a regimental bandsman. His 1923 London recital debut essentially began his career, and began it spectacularly. Audiences and critics were dumbfounded by his technique, achieved without any seeming effort. His interpretation of Debussy’s music won him particular acclaim, prompting Debussy’s widow to declare that nobody besides her late husband sounded so effective.
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| Walter Gieseking |
But, after his family and butterflies – for he picked up his father’s enthusiasm – Gieseking was totally dedicated to his music. This is what comes through in the letters: accounts of his travels, his programs, the pianos he faced, and the critical reactions. Once he achieved international fame, which happened early in his career, it was nonstop travel in country after country, with ships and trains giving way to planes and cars over the years, but still an incredible grind. This book should be required reading for anyone desiring a concert career, because it underscores the amount of sheer work that’s involved.
Gieseking fandom borders on fanaticism, as it should, but the pianist’s reputation was tarred when he was accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the Third Reich era. He never was a member of the party and objected to its philosophy and politics, but he and his family remained in Germany throughout the era and he continued to give concerts where the Reich permitted, acceding to the Goebbels mandate that works by Jewish composers be removed from all programming. This presented a hardship – Gieseking not only regularly programmed such works but remained friends with composers like Paul Hindemith and Ernst Toch, whose music was forbidden.
As the biography takes pains to explain, Gieseking was not a rebel, preferring to keep his head down and continue performing. A substantial portion of the book is devoted to Gieseking’s “denazification” process, a post-war ritual to which hundreds of accused collaborators were subjected, typically waving through scientists like Wernher von Braun (whose V2 rocket killed thousands of allies during the war, but who was judged to be useful to the U.S.), while delaying the cause of others. Thanks to Gieseking’s imperfect command of English and an interviewer with a very clear agenda, the pianist was forbidden to perform outside of the particular sector of Germany in which he resided, a restriction that persisted until the ban was lifted in 1947. But even after that, some of his performance venues (including Carnegie Hall) were dogged by protestors wrongly insisting that the pianist had been a Nazi.
It didn’t help that calumnies were spread by fellow-artists Arthur Schnabel (“He is ... a passionate beautiful Hitlerian. Goes easily with stupidity”) and Arthur Rubinstein (“... he answered arrogantly, ‘I am a convinced Nazi. Hitler is saving our country.’ ... ‘Look here, Gieseking,’ I said sternly, ‘you had better keep out of my way,’ and I never addressed him or looked at him again”). Rubinstein’s quote is from his impressively fictitious autobiography My Many Years, which was written after Rubinstein acknowledged that he had confused Gieseking with another pianist who truly was a Nazi – but I’m guessing the other pianist lacked the name value for a juicy piece of gossip.
Gieseking’s denazification interview was conducted by Severin Kaven on September 20, 1945 at Gieseking’s home in Wiesbaden. Kaven’s report was dated the following day. “I am a pure artist,” Gieseking declared defensively, after being hammered with questions about the concerts he gave in Germany and occupied territories during the reign of the Reich.
“You never thought of leaving Germany?” he is asked. “Not after 1933. I would have lost my entire fortune, and I had my family and father to think about.”
Kaven was a Polish national who came to the U.S. in 1935. He was fluent in five languages, and was drafted in 1942. His war record, available online, shows that he was passionate about defeating every trace of Hitler’s legacy – which is admirable, but the interview transcript and report, both of which are reproduced fully in this book, show a man on a very determined mission. And Gieseking had no legal representation during the interview, nor was he allowed to review the transcript and final report.
Rudolf Goette, a concert manager who had worked with Gieseking since 1926, wrote a lengthy response to Kaven’s report, a well-considered essay that gave an overview of the pianist’s activities both before and during the war. Goette notes that Gieseking repeatedly turned down invitations to play for Hitler, and avoided invitations from the Propaganda Ministry for other performances before Reich notables. His effort helped to sway American military officials to reverse the Gieseking ban, but misinformation endured, as shown in a New York Times piece from February 2, 1947, by Delbert Clark. Here’s an excerpt:
“The cases of artists, actors and musicians cleared by German denazification tribunals are no longer subject to review by United States authorities, according to an order recently issued by Lieut. Gen. Lucius D. Clay, deputy military governor ... The order opens the way for such men as ... Walter Gieseking, the pianist, and many others who openly supported the Nazis to resume public activity so far as United States zone is concerned.” This biography should go a long way to clearing the pianist’s name of such false charges once and for all.
As for his music, his discography presents a confusing cascade of recording company names, especially because labels changed names, sold rights, and changed ownership over the years. And there are many smaller labels keeping his performances available, so the choices can be dizzying. But between that Warners box set and these Meloclassic releases, you can feel that your Gieseking needs are comfortably covered. And needs, indeed, they are.
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