Wilhelm Backhaus

There are two of his Beethoven 4ths on youtube. I am posting the one with Knappertsbusch conducting. Backhaus has a wonderful, totally integrated technique. You can see how every movement is precisely coordinated. Like Horowitz he sits low at the keyboard. Whether or not you like his musical style his pianistic capibility is phenomenal.

Well kannan725, I guess we are 1 for 3. We disagree on Weissenberg, agree on Annie Fischer, and now it turns out we disagree on Backhaus. Another 'German' pianist. A lot of what I don't like about piano playing can be grouped under the 'German' style. It seems they reign supreme at touting 'the long line' as the be-all and end-all in interpretation, but if you'll listen carefully, again for them 'the long line' is not an arcing phrase line but something actually flat and lifeless (please grant me 'good behavior' marks for putting in the word 'relatively,' I mean it). I think it's the air of supreme concentration and poetry on their faces that fools so many listeners into thinking it's good. I think he's an excellent musician who is a victim of the aesthetic of the time. I also get this impression from Artur Schnabel, whom I worship. I love his Beethoven sonata recordings - in a way they still reign supreme. However, the more I go back to them the more I am under the impression that there's so much more possible in these works, and that he would have much more had he not been constrained by the aesthetics of his time and the teachers he had. Everybody reading this should understand the context in which I am offering these opinions - I have worked for over 20 years with Kemal Gekic, a pianist who is forging a totally new approach to interpretation. Kemal and I have discussed these matters innumerable times and continue to. A long time ago he told me he felt Horowitz's playing was incredibly great, but that it could not only be equaled but eclipsed. And he set out to do that. At the time I thought it was a ridiculous, impossible goal, but I thought, why not go for it? What a laudable effort! What better way to discover the un-discoverable? 20 years later Kemal has actually done it. Unbelievably, magnificently, he has taken the art of interpretation to heights both new and to my mind never before achieved. Not that he always plays 'better' than Horowitz; often he does not even 'equal' the Old Man's playing, but sometimes he does succeed - and even one success is already a miracle. It has been an incredible journey for him, filled with failures and struggle, suffering and defeat. He has had to confront every possible negative aspect of himself - an incredibly painful process. But the occasional and now increasingly frequent 'victories' have a special poignancy precisely because of that suffering and struggle. This is why I am so intolerant of certain things in people's playing - I have a vision of what's possible and am increasingly clear on what's needed to achieve it. And by the way I was intolerant of certain aspects of Kemal's playing as well... One other thing while I am on the subject of the context of this forum: I also regret my language is couched so much in terms of physical organization - I would much prefer to talk about musical issues. But I hope you see that if you follow my advice on physical organization it will lead directly to musical changes. We need to be constantly linking up the physical and musical: when I give some special thumb exercise it is never the thumb exercise. It's about the tonal-expressive possibilities that open up from empowering your thumb in that particular way. It's always about the music... Kind regards, AFF

1. I think we could raise it to 3 out of 5 if we include Clifford Curzon and Gyorgy Sebok. 2. By the way I posted Curzon's Kinderszenen and a lengthy comment he gave on the teaching of Artur Schnabel. Definitely worth a listen. Attached to the DVD of Curzon's complete BBC performances there is a bonus CD where he contrasts the teaching of Landowska and Schnabel. 3. I fully agree that music comes from the body and a greater understanding of movement can transform your concept of music making. Body Thinking also extends to the abstract sciences. My only problem is when people over-complicate the mechanics or when they cannot master it and let it go. I think we should try to understand better how these new forms of sensation can become so integrated that we forget about them entirely. 4. Regarding Backhaus, I don't like everything about his playing. He doesn't have much finesse. But there is a lot to learn from watching and listening to him. His pianism and musical logic are superb even if they do not represent all that can be done. Backhaus is worthy of qualified admiration if not hero worship. 5. Are you restricting your claim about Kemal Gekic to pianists? Among conductors Furtwangler and Kleiber attained a level of music making that has rarely been matched. Can you describe some of Gekic's new insights in a distilled form?

I'd go along with that. A much nicer proportion, too... Gosh I would be fascinated to see that bonus CD. I have always loved Curzon's playing, there was a recording of the Dvorak Quintet I listened to for years. The videos bore out my impression that he was a pianist of the highest capability and sensitivity - what warmth, what complete command of the keyboard. Kemal is a good example of music coming from the body. He is hyper-cerebral, but told me that he learned more from the ideas of Feldenkrais than I ever did. And I would say our own beloved Andrew (Cziffra to those who don't know his real name) is a pretty good example of the latter phenomenon you describe. Sorry Andrew; I really do appreciate your in-depth search but I am also waiting, waiting for the integration in your playing that will really allow you to leave this all behind and begin to appear more often on the stages of Great Britain than the pages of this forum! I would absolutely agree. I would add Claudio Abbado, Evgeny Svetlanov and the current conductor of the Ruska Capella Orchestra to those conductors who have achieved amazing and unprecedented results. As for Kemal's new insights: that's another book. In a nutshell, compare his Chopin A flat major Impromptu (VAI, Kemal Gekic Live) to all other recordings. It is so much more witty, his playing really makes you laugh, because he really inflects what is in the music. The little decrescendi at the end of each phrase are done way more than we are used to and the result delights. He goes way out of tempo, simply running forward through certain fast passages as if on a whim, the result again charms. The music becomes invested with way more personality. In his group of 13 Chopin etudes, (Live in Japan CD) each etude takes on an amazing amount of personality. It is musicianship taken to its logical extreme. He thinks outside the box. He does everything in the score to an extent that few do, then goes beyond even that, into the emotional implications that open up when you really do everything in the score. Hope this bit of an answer helps... Come and see him for yourself in Novi Sad this Friday! Thanks for a thoughtful, informative post, AFF