Beethoven / Brahms: Recitals / Concerts

As a child, Wilhelm Backhaus had met Johannes Brahms in person. In December 1959, the pianist recalled this early encounter in the Stuttgart Liederhalle with Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Backhaus always stays the course, keeping the entire composition in view. At the age of 21, when Wilhelm Backhaus won the prestigious Anton Rubinstein Competition in Paris in 1905, he enthralled the celebrated musicians of his day and, of course, audiences at the turn of the century with standard works of the highest brilliance. Yet he impressed not only with works by Franz Liszt and virtuoso composers related to him in style. In 1927, he became the first pianist ever to record all 24 Etudes, Opp. 10 and 25, by Frédéric Chopin. After the Second World War, however, Backhaus restricted his repertoire to Beethoven’s sonatas and piano concertos, Mozart’s sonatas and a few piano concertos, and Brahms’s two piano concertos. He also occasionally included a little Schubert, a small helping of Haydn, and selected works by Schumann. Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas played a central role in his concerts. We also owe to him the first complete stereo recording of these sonatas. Backhaus brought his Ludwigsburg piano recital of December 12, 1953, to a close and crowned it with the Hammerklavier Sonata. One has the feeling of having experienced the sonata as a unified, logical—and therefore comprehensible—fabric of notes. This applies, of course, not only to the monumental Hammerklavier Sonata, but also to the other works Backhaus performed in the Ludwigsburg program. Like the two Brahms concertos, Beethoven’s five piano concertos remained at the center of Backhaus’s interests well into old age, and thus also at the heart of his professional life. In March 1962, Joseph Keilberth conducted the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, Op. 73, in Stuttgart, in palpable accord with the soloist’s clear and mature intentions and wishes.