Clavier Companion - March/April 2013 - 26

CLAVIER COMPANION

EMI Classics

inent readings of Schumann’s Etudes
Symphoniques and Brahms’s Paganini
Variations, and his Saint-Saens’s Carnival of
the Animals with his compatriot Bela Siki (a
Lipatti pupil) is marvelous. His reading of the
Delibes-Dohnányi Waltz from ‘Coppelia’ is
one of the most charming piano recordings
ever made.
Solomon: The best of the many recordings
the British pianist Solomon made with Legge
include a glorious wartime Brahms’s Handel
Variations, powerful postwar accounts of the
two Brahms concerti with the Philharmonia,
a magisterial Bach-Busoni “Wachet Auf!” and
several Beethoven sonatas, among them an
outstanding “Hammerklavier.” The Scriabin
concerto recorded at the request of the Maharajah of Mysore was
only released after the pianist’s death and is not a faithful representation of his artistry.
Artur Schnabel: It is thanks to Legge that we have Schnabel’s
recording of the complete Beethoven sonatas. He also produced
the great pianist’s final sessions, among them Beethoven’s concertos
2 through 5 with the Philharmonia, as well as his last recording,
Schubert’s complete impromptus.
Edwin Fischer: Fischer’s magical Well-Tempered Clavier owes its
existence to Legge. The later sessions that Legge supervised
include an account of Bach’s three-piano concerto together with
pianists Denis Mathews and Ronald Smith, as well as a legendary
“Emperor” Concerto with Furtwängler conducting.
Benno Moiseiwitsch: The great Russian pianist Moiseiwitsch
recorded with EMI for nearly three decades, and Legge oversaw a
number of his sessions, including the one which produced his
greatest ever recording, made in one take at the end of an already
complete recording session: the Mendelssohn-Rachmaninoff
‘Scherzo’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which features
remarkably fluid phrasing and mindboggling voicing.

Walter Gieseking: Gieseking’s prodigious output under Legge includes his acclaimed recordings of the complete Debussy and Ravel piano
music and the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas.
Among his finest performances, however, are
some solo recordings from 1951 never released on
CD in the West, including Bach’s Partita No. 6,
Handel’s Suite No. 5, and four crystalline Scarlatti
Sonatas.
Egon Petri: Many of Petri’s best recordings in
the 1930s were overseen by Legge, among them
spaciously phrased Schubert-Liszt transcriptions
of remarkable depth and lyricism (Gretchen am
Spinnrade being particularly beautiful) and a passionate reading of Liszt’s second concerto.

My thanks to Countess Lavinia de Korgelay, Alan Sanders, and
Jacques Leiser for their assistance in the preparation of this article.
All quotes in this article from the book On and Off the Record: A
Memoir of Walter Legge by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. University Press
of New England, 2002.
Photos on pages 22 and 24 courtesy of the Mark Ainley collection. All rights reserved.
Photo on page 20 copyright © 1975, Jacques Leiser. All rights reserved.
Photos on pages 18, 19, and 26 courtesy of EMI Classics, Inc. Used with permission. All rights reserved.

A Canadian writer and teacher with a particular interest in historical
piano recordings, Mark Ainley has researched and written about a
number of important pianists, most notably Dinu Lipatti and Marcelle
Meyer. His research about Dinu Lipatti led to the discovery and
publication of previously unpublished recordings of this legendary artist.
He currently operates the websites www.thepianofiles.com and
www.dinulipatti.com, along with matching pages on Facebook. In
addition to writing for websites, magazines, and CD liner notes, he also
gives presentations focused on historical recordings by great pianists and
the shifting tides of interpretation. He can be contacted at
mark@markainley.com.

MARCH/APRIL 2013

Clavier Companion - March/April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clavier Companion - March/April 2013