Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Sonatas – Wilhelm Backhaus (live in Berlin, 1969)

Even as a young man Wilhelm Backhaus was the epitome of a pianist who focused on performing a work as objectively as possible. With this aim, he proved a strong influence on the succeeding generation of pianists and constituted the opposite pole to Wilhelm Kempff’s playing. Backhaus’ domain was the classic-romantic repertoire from Bach to Brahms with Beethoven at the centre. During his long career on the concert platform, which lasted for over 70 years, Backhaus intensively explored the piano sonatas of Beethoven with remarkable technical reliability and a profound mastery of musical substance. This live recording of a concert – featuring four major sonatas, including the Waldstein Sonata, Op. 53, and the Sonata in E major, Op. 109 – given in Berlin during the last year of Backhaus’ life (1969) – once more demonstrates the merits of Backhaus’ clear and, in the most positive sense of the word, classicist interpretational approach: like almost no other pianist, he knew how to illustrate the content and architecture of this music without sacrificing the detail – but also without losing himself within it.