Something historic again this week. From the 1980 Salzburg Festival, a recital by legendary Russian Pianist Emil Gilels in a program of music by Mozart and Chopin.
Here’s the rundown:
Mozart: Sonata in F Major K. 533 and 494
Mozart: Fantasy in D Minor K. 397
Chopin: Sonata in B Minor
Emil Gilels is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time. He was one of the first Soviet artists, along with David Oistrakh, allowed to travel and give concerts in the West. His American debut was in October 1955, with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy. His British debut was in 1952 at the Royal Albert Hall. Emil Gilels made his Salzburg Festival debut in 1969 with a piano recital of Weber, Prokofiev and Beethoven at the Mozarteum, followed by a performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with George Szell and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 1981, Emil Gilels suffered a heart attack after a recital at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and suffered declining health thereafter. He died unexpectedly during a medical checkup in Moscow on 14 October 1985, only a few days before his 69th birthday. Sviatoslav Richter, who knew Gilels well and was a fellow-student in the class of Heinrich Neuhaus at the Moscow Conservatory, believed that Gilels was killed accidentally when a drug was wrongly injected during a routine checkup, at the Kremlin hospital. However, Danish composer and writer Karl Aage Rasmussen, in his biography of Richter, denies this possibility and contends that it was just a false rumour.
Enjoy the concert from August 11, 1980.
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