Bach & Beethoven : Quasi una fantasia

A child prodigy in his native country, the Brazilian pianist who passed away in November 2021 kept his distance from the noisy fanfare of fame. His enormous hands and his natural and virtuoso technique always assisted his full, powerful and mellow sound. Here Qobuz looks back at the career of a musician that for a long time was the “best-kept secret in the world of the piano”.

Somewhat overshadowed today by his compatriots Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov, Alexander Scriabin is nonetheless a key figure in Russian music. At the beginning of the 20th century, the composer and virtuoso pianist broke away from the Romantic legacy to offer a unique and innovative musical language which no one would follow. His work, deeply influenced by mystical philosophy and synaesthesia, would undergo a dazzling evolution in barely two decades, interrupted by his premature death at the age of 43.

An artist of another time, Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991) believed in inspiration: he took on music as if it were a religion, with a respectful enthusiasm for the masters that came before him. With his velvet touch, sense of phrasing and storytelling quality, Wilhelm Kepff’s art was like that of a waking dream. Half poet, half divine, during a time when expression of emotion triumphed all. He recorded many times the works of his favourite composers, in particular his ‘god’ Beethoven, for whom Kempff is well known and left behind three complete sonatas in keeping with his own maturation and the evolution of his recording technique.