PAKM034 - Hammerklavier Sonata

The sound quality of the remastered Beethoven Hammerklavier recording here came as something of a surprise to me. My initial response to the discs, upon replay, was that they were not only in excellent physical condition, but also that the recording appeared to be quite good for its era, if a little on the thin side. There was also a problem throughout most of the sides with swish, something which appears to afflict 78rpm discs at the recording stage, rather than being a product of a particular pressing; otherwise they were fine.

I set about the XR remastering using a later Wilhelm Kempff recording as a sonic reference and, upon completion of restoration, had a nice-sounding 'finished' product, though one which sounded a little muted and was perhaps still somewhat unconvincing in the bass. At this point in the restoration process I had just received copies of the Ashkenazy Beethoven Sonata recordings and, noting that for his recording of this piece, Ashkenazy's piano was perfectly in tune (and therefore ready for me to use), decided our of curiosity to quickly re-equalise the Kentner to the tonal "map" of Ashkenazy's piano.

The result was nothing short of astonishing. Suddenly the recording came to life in a way it simply hadn't previously - the piano tone was entirely convincing and immediately showed Kentner's interpretation in an entirely new light. Although there inevitably remain some artefacts of shellac surface noise and other hints as to the vintage of the recording, it's easy to forget whilst listening to this performance that it pre-dates the Second World War. Quite simply, this is the best sound quality I've heard from any piano recording of its era. For me this remastering truly represents a personal milestone.

Louis Kentner

Biographical notes from Wikipedia

Louis Kentner (19 July 1905 – 23 September 1987) was a Hungarian, later British, pianist who excelled in the works of Chopin and Liszt, as well as the Hungarian repertoire.

He was born Lajos Kentner in Karwin in Austrian Silesia (present-day Karviná, Czech Republic), to Hungarian parents. He received his education as a musician at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest from 1911 to 1922, studying with Arnold Székely (piano), Hans Koessler and Zoltán Kodály (composition), and Leo Weiner (chamber music).

Kentner commenced his concert career at the age of 15. He was awarded 5th Prize at the 1932 International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw; and he won a Liszt prize in Budapest. He moved to England permanently in 1935. He gave radio broadcasts of the complete sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, the complete Well-Tempered Clavier (Bach), and the complete Années de Pèlerinage (Liszt). He was President of the British Liszt Society for many years, until his death.

At the composer's request, he was the soloist at the Hungarian premiere of Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2, in Budapest in 1933, under Otto Klemperer; and the first European performance of the Concerto No. 3 (in London, under Sir Adrian Boult, 27 November 1946). He and Yehudi Menuhin (his wife's brother-in-law) gave the first performance of William Walton's Violin Sonata, at Zürich on 30 September 1949.

His playing was heard in Richard Addinsell's Warsaw Concerto from the soundtrack of the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight. However, his hands were not shown, and he preferred to be uncredited as he did not think that being associated with film music would help his career. When the piece achieved worldwide popularity, however, he was happy to acknowledge his involvement.

He was a member of many music competition juries. He also composed, his output including orchestral works, chamber music, piano pieces and songs.

Private life

His first wife was the pianist Ilona Kabós. That marriage ended in 1945, and he then married Griselda Gould, daughter of the pianist Evelyn Suart (Lady Harcourt), whose other daughter Diana became Yehudi Menuhin's second wife in 1947.

Notes from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Kentner

Musical notes from Wikipedia:

Musical scores from IMSLP:

Notes on the 24-bit download: Please see this page for test files and further information regarding this format. Although restoration work is done at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, we have upsampled the final 24-bit master to 48kHz for additional replay compatibility of our FLAC download.

Our twenty-four bit FLAC downloads can be replayed in full quality using a standard DVD video player, a DVD writer and an inexpensive piece of PC software - see here for more information about replay from Video DVD discs.

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