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In 1961, the visiting orchestra to Salzburg was the Dresden Staatskapelle. The 'magic harp', as it was known, certainly justified its reputation under Franz Konwitschny, who confirmed his own standing as one of the leading representatives of the traditionally 'heavy' style of music-making in the German Classical and Romantic repertory.

Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony was notable for its powerful contrast between darker and lighter orchestral sonorities, and much the same was true of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major K 488, in which the soloist was no less a luminary than Friedrich Gulda, whose playing was remarkable for its subtly contoured interaction with the orchestra but who was also able to bring to the piece a note of virtuosity and, in the Adagio, an overriding calm.

The Staatskapelle’s concert under Konwitschny ended with Strauss’s 'Sinfonia domestica': a vast portrait of the Strauss family drawing on the orchestra’s full palette of tone colours.

The appearance of a new, complete recording by Friedrich Gulda of the Beethoven sonatas, made before his two previously known cycles, can be regarded as a sensation. If a pianist makes three recordings within 20 years of the most important cycle for his instrument then it would be regarded, even by today’s standards, as extraordinary. But to have done it in the 1950s and ’60s was a unique achievement - the business of capturing it as a sound recording in the early 1950s was still something brave and new in every way. Schnabel’s recording from the 1930s had the ill luck of being made at the ‘wrong’ time, when the world was busy with greater problems; the same was more or less true of the first recording that Wilhelm Kempff began, but did not complete, during the War. To be sure, the history of sound recording has meant that constant technical advancements (LP, stereo and digital techniques) have been the prime reason for artists to make lavish, new complete recordings of the same works. All the same, Gulda’s second complete recording, for Decca in London, hitherto believed to be his first, still counts among the most audacious early recording projects of the sonatas in the post-war years. The recording that preceded it, which Orfeo have been authorised to publish here, was made for Austrian Radio. Gulda went to the Viennese studios to make it at the turn of 1953/4, at a time when the city was still under the control of the Russian occupying power. This young pianist, born in Vienna on 16 May 1930, had begun his international career in spectacular fashion by winning the Geneva Competition in 1946. He performed Beethoven’s sonatas in the autumn of 1953 in several Austrian cities. He was so ‘played in’ that it seems to have been a mere matter of routine for him to record up to six big sonatas in the space of just two days in the studio. This was an incredible achievement that is in no way diminished by the minimal glitches to be found here. If anything, these inaccuracies enhance the spontaneity and vibrancy of Gulda’s performance, which even at this early stage of his career was distinguished by a headstrong personality and exceptional abilities. His choice of tempi is fearless and stringent, while his high degree of precision is fostered by an economical use of the pedal and a rejection of any arbitrary accelerandi or ritardandi (as for example in the Hammerklavier Sonata). It is such aspects of his playing in particular that reveal a de-Romanticisation of Beethoven. This was a process to which Gulda’s interpretations contributed, yet which detracted not a whit from the master’s greatness. On the contrary: it is precisely the simplicity and the clarity of Gulda’s Beethoven interpretations – despite their occasional stylised moments – that make evident the humility and modesty of the pianist in the face of the supreme genius of the composer. The Sonatas are here complemented by the Six Bagatelles Op. 126, the Diabelli Variations Op. 120 and the Eroica Variations Op. 35.

The public image of Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) is divided: for some, he is one of the most important Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century, whereas others perceive him as an enfant terrible whose battle against the cultural establishment and the constraints of the music business, which limited his multifaceted artistic interests and talents, became legendary.As ever, such generalisations are both true and false. This compilation of hitherto unreleased recordings made by Gulda for the RIAS Berlin between 1950 and 1959 enables us to experience the pianist and musician Gulda in a more differentiated and unprejudiced manner. For even here, the 'complete musician' - as Gulda saw himself throughout his career - comes into view.The spectrum of recordings which, given the almost frightening concert and recording activities Gulda tackled during this decade, only represents the tip of the iceberg, speaks for itself: it stretches from Mozart to Prokofiev and shows Gulda to be a universal artist who, from the beginning, sought to combine the highest possible degree of objectivity and authenticity with the greatest intensity of music-making. Gulda's musical and pianistic foundations had been laid in Vienna by his teacher Bruno Seidlhofer, who had formed nearly all the important pianists of the 'Viennese School'; the quality of Gulda's training was confirmed by his being awarded the first prize at the Geneva Piano Competition in 1946 which Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli had won before him. Gulda looked for role models who displayed a spontaneous and at the same time controlled intensity in their playing, and he found them in American Jazz, whose inexorable rise in post-war Europe was to fascinate him throughout his career. The early Mozart and Beethoven recordings, made in 1950, demonstrate Gulda's phenomenal analytical understanding of compositional structures and his unerring sense of rhythm and touch. His Chopin and Ravel recordings are sensational: on the highest pianistic level, Chopin's Prélude Op. 28 and Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit are presented in a rare, incisive manner on both a musical and dramatic level.With his interpretation of two important early works by Debussy, the Suite pour le Piano and the Suite bergamasque, as well as a selection of the Préludes, Gulda also proves to be one of the few non-French pianists who found a decidedly modern and yet authentic access to these masterworks.The programme closes with single pieces by Chopin (Nocturne in C minor,Op. 48 No. 1 and Berceuse Op. 60), demonstrating Gulda's intensive exploration of romantic works, as well as a spectacular recording of Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7 Op. 83, made in 1950. Prokofiev's music, whose wildness in the end proved incompatible with Gulda, did not remain in his repertoire for long; he did, however, pass on important impulses to his most famous pupil, Martha Argerich.

A début in 1958 was that of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, one of the most famous and versatile orchestras in the world.The Concertgebouw gave five concerts that summer, the first of which was devoted to Mozart. Even in a live performance, Wolfgang Sawallisch phrases the music with extreme precision, proving himself as great a Mozartian as he was a Wagnerian after his début in 1957 at the helm of Tristan und Isolde. No less acclaimed by this date in his career was the soloist, Friedrich Gulda, whose performance provided the concert with its point of calm repose, countering virtuoso expectations and in that way anticipating the musical 'chameleon' of the later period.

Friedrich Gulda plays Schubert & Chopin on various recordings made in 1954 and1956.

Among the countless concerts that Karl Böhm conducted with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the Salzburg Festival were not only a number of inevitable repeats of standard works from the mainstream symphonic repertory but also a number of surprises and genuine trouvailles. One such concert occurred in 1957, when Böhm joined forces with a young firebrand to perform a rarely heard early work by Richard Strauss, who at the time of its composition was widely regarded as a member of the avant-garde. Returning to Salzburg for the first time since his Festival début six years earlier, Friedrich Gulda performed the Burleske in D minor, once described by Hans von Bülow as "inhumanly difficult".When von Bülow declined to give its first performance, that honour fell to Eugen d'Albert. For Gulda, there was no knuckle-breaking cascade of notes, no insane accelerando or dynamic outburst that was so "inhuman" that it could not be placed in a meaningful and thrilling musical context with the help of Böhm and the Vienna Philharmonic.The result is a rewarding re-encounter firmly with the 'Romantic' tradition.

The two Beethoven piano sonatas precede his Decca recordings of the same works. Jeremy Siepmann in his notes says, “One of the things that most impresses here is the sheer wholeness of the playing. Outstanding examples include all of Op. 101. Nor by any means is the Appassionata to be sniffed at, though unlike some, Gulda makes a clear distinction between passion and hysterics.”