Mozart / Beethoven / Haydn / Strauss: Piano Concertos

These are unique sound recordings that were able to be preserved in the SWR archive, and which already delighted fans of the pianist with the first box in the major Friedrich Gulda retrospective. Now follows with the second box a perhaps even more interesting collection: Even if the recordings available here are "conventional" repertoire, one can still see today, even after several decades, how radically, lucidly, and rhythmically groundbreaking Gulda's playing must have affected his listeners at the time. "The greats of jazz as well as Bach and Mozart are to be my role models," Gulda noted in 1954. One can thus guess what importance Mozart had in his life from the very beginning. Gulda first performed the E-flat major concerto K. 449 in September 1954, and it then appeared again and again in concert. The A major concerto K. 488 was one of the first three Mozart piano concertos that Gulda studied (1948). He first performed it as part of a 37-city tour of South America in 1949. Among the other recordings in this collection are especially Strauss' "Folly" and Debussy's "Fireworks," extraordinary discographical rarities for Gulda lovers.