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Rarities tonight from the Archives of Swiss Radio. Legendary pianist Wilhelm Backhaus in concert with Ferenc Fricsay and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, recorded by RTS on May 24, 1961.
The featured work is Beethoven’s Piano Concerto Number 4 opus 58.
Born in Leipzig, Wilhelm Backhaus was the son of a well-known architect. He began learning piano at the age of four with his mother, an amateur pianist. The boy’s talent was soon recognized by Arthur Nikisch, at whose recommendation Backhaus studied under Alois Reckendorf at the Leipzig Conservatory between 1891 and 1899, then took private piano lessons with Eugen d’Albert in Frankfurt. As a boy of 9 or 10 he was taken to hear both of the Brahms piano concertos performed by d’Albert — and conducted by Brahms himself.
He made his first concert tour at the age of sixteen. In 1900 he went to England and in 1901 played for the first time in Manchester at the Gentleman’s Concerts. In 1902 he performed at the Hallé Concerts, and thereafter in 12 concerts at the Queen’s Hall, London, and played 6 different piano concertos at the Promenade Concerts. In 1904 he became Professor of Piano at the Royal Manchester College of Music. In 1905 he won the Anton Rubinstein Competition, with Béla Bartók taking second place. He toured widely throughout his life – in 1921 he gave seventeen concerts in Buenos Aires in less than three weeks. Backhaus made his U.S. debut on 5 January 1912 as soloist in Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto (the “Emperor”) with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra. He taught at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1926. In 1930, he moved to Lugano and became a citizen of Switzerland.
The London Times praised Backhaus in its 1969 obituary for having upheld the classical German music tradition of the Leipzig Conservatory. His phenomenal transposing powers spawned many anecdotes: finding the piano a semitone too low at a rehearsal of Grieg’s A minor Concerto, he simply played it in B-flat minor — and then in the original A minor at the concert after the instrument had been correctly tuned.
Backhaus was quick to recognize the importance of recordings. His drastically abridged 1909 recording of the Grieg Piano Concerto, lasting about six minutes, was not only the first recording of that work, but also the first recording of any concerto. He recorded it complete, and magnificently, in the early 1930s.
At the time of his death, Backhaus had nearly completed his second complete Beethoven sonata cycle. All that was missing was the Hammerklavier Sonata.
Ferenc Fricsay was a Hungarian conductor. From 1960 until his death, he was an Austrian citizen. He made his United Kingdom debut at the 1950 Edinburgh International Festival, conducting Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro at the Glyndebourne Festival. He made his Buenos Aires debut that year with Carmina Burana. In 1951 he made his debuts in Italy and with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. In 1953 he made his debuts in Paris, Milan, Lucerne, and the US, where he conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. He was appointed musical director of the Houston Symphony in 1954, but resigned halfway through the season over “disagreements on musical policy.” He made his debut with the Israel Philharmonic in 1954. He spent much of his time from the 1950s onward in Germany as music director of the Bavarian State Opera (1956–1958) and as conductor of the RIAS Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Berlin Philharmonic. Also in 1956, he was appointed General Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera, a position he held until 1958.
Fricsay gave his last concert on 7 December 1961 in London, conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra in the UK premiere of Zoltán Kodály’s Symphony, Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto (with Wolfgang Schneiderhan), and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. He suffered from repeated illnesses throughout his life and finally succumbed to cancer of the stomach on 20 February 1963 at the age of 48 in Basel, Switzerland.
Enjoy the concert.
