Géza Anda

Hungarian-born Géza Anda (1921–1976) was described by the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler as ‘a troubadour of the piano’ whose early death robbed the world of one of the greatest pianists of the twentieth century. Anda was an incredible virtuoso, who in 1957 played all the Bartók concertos in one concert but also took up a different challenge by performing and recording all the Mozart piano concertos later in his life. He performed with all the major orchestras and conductors of the time, including Boulez, Fricsay, Karajan, Kubelík and Solti, and made a large number of definitive recordings for EMI and Deutsche Grammophon of music by Brahms, Chopin, Liszt and especially Schumann.

This spine-tingling account of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No.1 has never been issued before. It is a ‘live’ studio recording from 1958 with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra accompanied by Georg Solti, a fellow Hungarian, and the performance generates enormous electricity between the two artists.

The live recording from 1954 of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No.2 conducted by Otto Klemperer has been issued before but it has been newly remastered for this release. It qualifies for a re-release on the basis that it is one the most recommendable versions of the work and should never be out of the catalogue.

This is the second installment of Géza Anda’s recordings from the archives of the SWR. His early reputation was built upon his unrivaled mastery of the great Romantic repertoire. His infallible sense of form, and understanding of the inner workings of the music and his brilliant, unsentimental performing style have influenced subsequent generations of pianists. These are recordings from 1950, 1951 & 1955.

With this double CD, Audite opens a four-part series of recordings of the Hungarian pianist Géza Anda (1921-1976) from the archives of the West German Radio Cologne. These are both studio- and live-recordings from 1952 until 1970 which have until now remained unpublished or are premiere CD recordings. It is the aim of this edition to display a representative cross section of Anda’s diverse repertoire and also to close a delicate gap in his discography.

Published for the very first time are the recordings of the four famous Viennese piano concertos by Mozart: Anda appears as soloist and conductor in one and is also joined by renowned conductors Joseph Keilberth and Constantin Silvestri together with Camerata Academica Salzburg and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Cologne.

Finally, Anda can be experienced for the first time as a conductor in an impetuous recording of Mozart’s Symphony in C major KV 200.