From the Deutsche Grammophon LP shown above, issued in 1972 to mark the Beethoven Bicentennial two years earlier. Sixty-four year old Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991), soloist. Composed in 1795.

Allegro (0:02)
Adagio (6:26)
Menuetto - Allegretto (11:00)
Prestissimo (14:01)

Wilhelm Kempff war evangelischer Kantorensohn. Als Vierjähriger siedelte er mit seiner Familie nach Potsdam über, wo sein Vater eine Berufung an die Nikolaikirche als Königlicher Musikdirektor erhalten hatte. Nach erstem Violin- und Klavierunterricht durch den Vater setzte Kempff ab 1904 durch Vermittlung von Georg Schumann seine Ausbildung bei Heinrich Barth (Klavier) und Robert Kahn (Komposition) fort. Kempff studierte von 1914 bis 1917 an der Berliner Musikhochschule, wobei ihm wegen überragenden Könnens die Abschlussprüfung erlassen wurde. Sein Debüt in der Berliner Philharmonie gab er 1918 mit Beethovens 4. Klavierkonzert unter Arthur Nikisch und den Berliner Philharmonikern. 1924 übernahm Kempff (als Nachfolger von Max von Pauer) die Leitung der Württembergischen Musikhochschule in Stuttgart. Dort leitete er bis 1929 auch eine Meisterklasse für Klavier. 1926 heiratete er im Berliner Dom seine Klavierschülerin Helene Freiin Hiller von Gaertringen. Bei einer ersten Türkeireise im Jahre 1927 beriet er den Staatspräsidenten Atatürk, welche Musiker an die neugegründete Musikhochschule in Ankara berufen werden sollten. 1929 gab er sein Amt in Stuttgart auf und zog mit seiner Familie in die Orangerie im Park Sanssouci in Potsdam. 1931 war Kempff Mitbegründer der Sommerkurse im Potsdamer Marmorpalais gemeinsam mit Max von Schillings, Eugen d'Albert, Edwin Fischer, Eduard Erdmann, Elly Ney und Georg Kulenkampff. 1940 begann seine Zusammenarbeit mit Herbert von Karajan, als er in Aachen das Klavierkonzert d-moll KV 466 von Mozart spielte. 1943 nahm er in Paris an einem Beethoven-Festival teil, mit den Kollegen Elly Ney, Alfred Cortot und Ginette Neveu sowie dem Dirigenten Hermann Abendroth. Im August 1944 nahm ihn Adolf Hitler in die Gottbegnadeten-Liste (Führerliste) auf, was ihn vor einem Kriegseinsatz bewahren sollte. Trotzdem wurde Kempff 1945 zum Volkssturm einberufen; am 4. Februar erfolgte die Evakuierung nach Schloss Thurnau in Oberfranken.

Ludwig van Beethoven est un compositeur allemand né à Bonn le 16 ou le 17 décembre 1770 et mort à Vienne le 26 mars 1827. Dernier grand représentant du classicisme viennois (après Gluck, Haydn et Mozart), Beethoven a préparé l'évolution vers le romantisme en musique et influencé la musique occidentale pendant une grande partie du XIXe siècle. Inclassable (« Vous me faites l'impression d'un homme qui a plusieurs têtes, plusieurs cœurs, plusieurs âmes » lui dit Haydn vers 17931), son art s'est exprimé à travers différents genres musicaux, et bien que sa musique symphonique soit la principale source de sa popularité, il a eu un impact également considérable dans l'écriture pianistique et dans la musique de chambre.

Dmitri Shostakovich
Sonata for viola and piano.
Op. 147
Year: 1975

I.- Moderato 00:00
II.- Allegretto 09:12
III.- Adagio 16:29

Kim Kashkashian, viola
Robert Levin, piano

Disclaimer: I do not own any copyright licenses for this video. This video has been posted just to share this magnificent version and not to benefit me financially. I strongly encourage you to BUY this fantastic CD so that those who made it will receive their much deserved royalties.


This was Shostakovich's last work, completed about a month before his death. Because of his advanced and painful arthritis, as well as his unsteady hand and bad eyesight, the composer showed an increasing tendency to write sparsely scored orchestral compositions (Symphonies No. 14 and No. 15, for example) and many chamber pieces in his last years, finding their reduced scoring easier to manage. Shostakovich died on August 9, 1975 of heart failure, compounded by advanced cancer of the lungs. He was also aware that he was going blind. For all the suffering he was enduring in his last days, the composer did not invest his Sonata for viola with nearly the morbid and gloomy moods found in most of the late quartets. He himself spoke about the work calling the first two movements merely a "novella," and "scherzo," respectively. He was a trifle more detailed about the finale, however, describing it as "an adagio in memory of Beethoven." He also summed up the music in general as "bright and clear." This last characterization of the work is misleading, as there is a feeling of resignation throughout, even if it is, to an extent, counterbalanced by a strong sense of serenity. In the end, the work seems to be an expression of the composer coming to terms with his ineluctable and unhappy fate.

The first movement, marked Moderato, is mournful, if serene, featuring sparse textures in the piano writing. The central panel (Allegretto) is actually playful in places, though one also finds a healthy dose of acid, typical of so many of the composer's later chamber pieces. There is a Russian, slightly exotic flavor to the music here, as well. The finale is the longest and most substantive of the three movements. Its Adagio marking was a favorite of the composer at this time -- indeed, his Quartet No. 15 (1974) featured six consecutive Adagios. The mood in the finale is less gloomy than in that dark work, and the composer makes a brief reference to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

While much of the work is subdued and uncomplicated, it does offer considerable challenges to the performers. The sonata was premiered privately on September 26, 1975, and publicly on October 1. A typical performance of the Sonata for viola lasts between 35 and 40 minutes.

Text by: Robert Cummings, Rovi

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Frédéric François Chopin - The Nocturnes | Maria João Pires, piano. Deutsche Grammophon, 1996. Gramohpone Choice and Grand Prix du Disque, 1997. "Chopin is a Poet. It’s very inner Music and very deep," Pires has said. "Chopin is the deep Poet of Music."

The Nocturnes | Chopin Night Music: "Of the tenderness, the charm, the awe and mystery which are to be found in the Nocturnes... Oh, those Nocturnes! Tones of infinite sadness! There is Music in them which fathoms the depths, which plunges us into the immensity; emotional force that rends our hearts; Horrible despair, bordering on the overwhelming immanence of death itsel; Divine ecstasy interrupted by a wail of sorrow, and again by a soft caress. And all is so sincere; the sincerity of one whose heart bleeds; whose soul is overflowing with tenderness!"
George Mathias, student of Chopin

The Complete XXI. Nocturnes:
00:00:00 Nocturne No.1 in B-flat minor, Op.9, No.1
00:05:41 Nocturne No.2 in E-flat major, Op.9, No.2
00:10:10 Nocturne No.3 in B major, Op.9, No.3
00:16:48 Nocturne No.4 in F major, Op.15, No.1
00:21:11 Nocturne No.5 in F-sharp major, Op.15, No.2
00:24:38 Nocturne No.6 in G minor, Op.15, No.3
00:29:04 Nocturne No.7 in C-sharp minor, Op.27, No.1
00:34:15 Nocturne No.8 in D-flat major, Op.27, No.2
00:40:51 Nocturne No.9 in B major, Op.32, No.1
00:45:46 Nocturne No.10 in A-flat major, Op.32, No.2
00:50:35 Nocturne No.11 in G minor, Op.37, No.1
00:56:22 Nocturne No.12 in G major, Op.37, No.2
01:02:19 Nocturne No.13 in C minor, Op.48, No.1
01:09:04 Nocturne No.14 in F-sharp minor, Op.48, No.2
01:16:23 Nocturne No.15 in F minor, Op.55, No.1
01:21:03 Nocturne No.16 in E-flat major, Op.55, No.2
01:25:55 Nocturne No.17 in B major, Op.62, No.1
01:32:21 Nocturne No.18 in E major, Op.62, No.2
01:38:19 Nocturne No.19 in E minor, Op.72, No.1
01:42:27 Nocturne No.20 in C-sharp minor, Op. posthume
01:46:29 Nocturne No.21 in C minor, Op. posthume
Gramophone's choice as the best Chopin's Nocturnes recording available.


"The complete set is made of the most concentrated eloquence and pianistic mastery. Passion rather than insouciance is Pires’s keynote. Here is no soft, Moonlit option but an intensity and drama that scorn all complacent salon or drawing-room expectations. How she relishes Chopin’s central storms, creating a vivid and spectacular yet unhistrionic contrast with all surrounding serenity or ‘embalmed darkness’. The con fuoco of Op.15 No.1 erupts in a fine fury and in the first Nocturne, Op.9 No.1, Pires’s sharp observance of Chopin’s appassionato marking comes like a prophecy of the coda’s sudden blaze. Such resolution and psychological awareness make you realize that Chopin, may well have thought that “there must be a bit of fear, and a bit of horror in your life”. Chopin, Pires informs us in no uncertain terms, was no sentimentalist. More intimately, in Op.15 No.3 (where the music’s wavering sense of irresolution led to the sobriquet ‘the Hamlet Nocturne’) Pires makes you hang on to every note in the coda’s curious, echoing chimes, and in the dolcissimo conclusion to No.8 (Op.27 No.2) there is an unforgettable sense of ‘all passion spent’, of gradually ebbing emotion. Not surprisingly, given her general approach, Pires is drawn to No.9 (Op.32 No.1), where an outwardly meek and Field-like demeanour is constantly menaced and thwarted, while in No.13 in C minor, one of Chopin’s most sombre masterpieces, her sense of strength in adversity is overwhelming. Her emotional force in the concluding doppio movimento will surely bring tears to the eyes of even the hardiest, most seasoned listener. And since she is no less successful in the following, wistful F sharp minor Nocturne (always among Chopin’s favourites) and in the rich and fragrant pastures of Op.62 Nos.1 and 2, I can safely say that you will look far and wide for performances of greater poetic command and authority. Pires with her burning clarity has reinforced our sense of Chopin’s stature, created a new range of possibilities, as we all must, I have no hesitation in declaring Maria Joao Pires – a Pianist without a trace of Narcissism – among the most eloquent Master-Musicians of our Time."
Bryce Morrison, Gramophone


“I can’t think of a pianist with a more ideal command of Chopin’s style. Pires trips through the roulades with filigree dexterity, but her tone is so thoughtful, serious and weighty that they arrive with immense emotional profundity.”
The Times, London, June 2007


MARIA JOÃO PIRES born in Lisbon on 23 July 1944 and played her first recital aged five. She studied composition and music theory at the Lisbon Conservatory, followed by further studies in Munich and Hanover, Germany. She made her London debut in 1986 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Parabenizações pelo seu septuagésimo aniversário cumprido neste ano de 2014.
From Portugal, with Love

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major, K. 456 (1784)

00:00 - Allegro vivace (Cadenza: Mozart/Anda)
12:13 - Andante un poco sostenuto
22:26 - Allegro vivace (Cadenza: Mozart)

Performed by Géza Anda (Pianist & Conductor) and the Camerata Academica des Salzburgers Mozarteums (1965).

"The year 1784 brought forth two more concertos still, very different from the preceding ones [of that year] and from each other. The first, again in B-flat (K. 456), which Mozart completed after recovering from a very heavy cold caught at the première of Il Re Teodoro by Casti and Paisiello, is distinguished by the fact that he wrote it neither for himself nor for a pupil as talented and close to him as Babette Ployer (for himself or for Babette he would certainly not have chosen B-flat again) but for another Vienna virtuoso, Maria Theresa Paradis. This young lady, who had been blind since childhood, and was at that time twenty-five years old, was the daughter of a State Councilor of Lower Austria, and a godchild of the Empress. She was a pupil of Leopold Kozeluch, and she could play, according to Gerber, 'more than sixty clavier concertos [by Kozeluch] with the greatest accuracy and the finest expression, in every way worthy of her teacher.' It is evidence of Mozart's broad‐ mindedness, or of his indifference, that he wrote a new concerto for the pupil of his deadly enemy to perform in Paris, whither a concert tour brought her in the autumn of 1784. For Paris, obviously, Kozeluch's concertos did not suffice. Kozeluch was, again quoting Gerber: 'Without doubt, among young and old, the most generally popular of all composers now living, and that quite rightly. His works are characterized by cheerfulness and grace, the noblest melody combined with the purest harmony and the most pleasing arrangement in respect to rhythm and modulation.'

Now Mozart gave even the Parisians, whom he so hated, credit for desiring something more than that. So he harked back a little to Schobert, Johann Christian Bach, and Schröter. The relations of the solo part and the orchestra in this work are, to be sure, purely Mozartean, characteristic only of him, and perhaps even closer than ever before; but the solo part has a different, more 'feminine,' more sensuous character than the preceding concertos, and that iridescence of expression characteristic of the second Ployer Concerto [K. 453] is almost completely absent. In the Ployer Concerto there is nothing like the modulation to B minor in this Parisian one, emphasized as it is by the combination of 6/8 and 2/4 meters. But Schröter, too, had indulged in such pseudo‐ drama, and the Parisians were fond of that sort of thing. The slow movement consists of variations with coda, in G minor. Their tearful character already has something to do with the loss of Barbarina's pin in Figaro; it is very French. The work is full of miracles of sonority, but it contains none of the 'surprises,' great or small, of the great concertos." - Alfred Einstein

Painting: Staircase in the Palace of Caprarola, Hubert Robert