Gieseking Plays Schumann

Gieseking is not quirky as one arm chair critic wrote-- he is a patrician and one of the supreme greats on the piano. I am not going to dissect his playing as some of our learned critics enjoy doing--of course we have not heard them play so we can substantiate their analysis. Schuman as Weick's student ( father of Clara) was a virtuosi pianist of a high Euro order----(Mitchell's book is quite educational). He was also among one of the most cultured musicians in Europe in many ways more cultured than many of the greats. A brilliant man no doubt, a virtuoso of the first rank, and a composer of substance. Marvelous to here G at his stage in life negotiate the passionate romantic of Schuman. Also remember G taught Haas, perhaps one of the most underrated pianist of this century--listen to his Ravel and Debussy (Etudes bk 2).Schuman is popular among pianist-- esp high velocity pianists ( read Mitchell's sage comments on that)-- I think his songs are superior to his solo piano music.--essentially impulsive vehicles to demonstrate technique.Gieseking is among the best of the best- a lil different than the 20th century remnants of extreme high velocity Rubenstein school of pianism these days. Shame supreme Chopin did not have a school of pianistic exponents-- God's wn angels sang through his fingers and nobody played him better than Artur Rubinstein. Beside digital prowess, there was a musical essence in Gieseking's playing - an essence long gone from the music world. Listen to Haas if you want to here a later version of Gieseking.

Beautiful performances.