Customer Reviews

Kapell Rediscovered

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Willy was beyond a doubt the greatest pianistic talent this country [USA] has ever produced." Leon Fleischer

America has seen its share of pianistic careers cut short for varying reasons: whether due to burnout (Van Cliburn), hand injuries (Leon Fleischer, Gary Graffman), or other ailments (Byron Janis). Even Murray Perahia, arguably the best American pianist active today, has battled stress related hand problems over the last 15 years. No piano career ended more tragically than William Kapell's, who died in a plane crash in 1953.

Kapell was returning home from a tour of Australia when his plane crashed into a mountain just south of Half Moon Bay, California. Twenty years ago, an off the air recording of Chopin's B-flat Minor Sonata from that last tour emerged, and rumors have floated for years about other Australian Kapell recordings. This two CD set contains those performances, the last recorded examples of Kapell's work.

Much has been written about the "new" Kapell that emerged in the last two years of his life, one less focused on keyboard pyrotechnics and gravitating toward the traditional German masters and a more contemplative style. Kapell's performance of the Bach Suite points toward the future in that his approach has similarities to Glenn Gould's, minus the Canadian pianist's insufferable vocalizing. The Mozart Sonata is played with clarity, tasteful phrasing, and a discrete rhythmic snap. It is poles apart from the Rococo, porcelain doll approach which was already falling out of favor.

It's neither inaccurate nor demeaning of Kapell to note that the pianist was somewhat under the spell of Vladimir Horowitz. Nearly every American pianist of the time was. (Kapell wanted to study with Horowitz, but the elder pianist demured, stating there was nothing he could teach Kapell.) Both the Prokofiev Seventh Sonata and Chopin Scherzo have Horowitzian touches, including interlocking octaves at the end of the Scherzo.

Whatever his similarities with Horowitz, Kapell was his own man in Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. The pianist plays the score, which was seldom performed as a piano piece at the time, pretty much as written. His performance is easily on par with Richter's famed Sofia account.

It is not Horowitz I think of when hearing Kapell's performance of the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto, but the composer. Kapell has that same aristocratic, yet restless approach. Unfortunately, Kapell employs the cuts in the score used by the composer. It's intriguing to think what a 40 year old Kapell, (circa 1962) would have done with this music.

Recorded off the air by an amateur using a home disc cutting machine, the sound is problematic. There is a great deal of static, clicks, and pops, as well as what sounds like cross talk with another radio station (audible during quieter pieces). Signal to noise ratio is poor, and a few moments have had to be patched from other Kapell recordings. Kapell fans will not be fazed by this, but those who insist on perfect sonics may find their enjoyment of these remarkable performances impaired.

I happened to catch All Things Considered (Saturday 10 May 2008). They had a discussion of William Kapell (William Kapell recordings turn up down under -- [...]). I have loved classical music for decades but I had never heard of William Kapell. NPR played portions of Kapell's recordings and they can be heard at indicated web site. I have to say the music was astounding. This album represents music played on Kapell's final tour (before he was killed in a plane crash. I'm not easy to impress but Kapell impresses and that's understatement. Some of the music is scratchy (for example, Mozart Sonta in B Flat for example) but this in no way detracts from the presentation (think of listening to classical music on old 78 rpm recordings). Kapell plays classical piano the way piano should be played but rarely is. Don't take my word for it: Listen to the NPR discussion. One music critic called Kapell's play about as close to perfect piano as is humanly possible to achieve; no arguments from me...WOW!

When I first heard that these recording by William Kapell were available I thought they might have been part of an archive found by an Australian Broadcast Corporation. The reality was a bit disappointing in that Kapell's final performances were preserved in an off-the-air recording made by a music enthusiast. I had to conclude that the quality of the recordings could only be abysmal, despite that we owe a debt of gratitude that these performances were preserved.

I was curious, however, and purchased the records and, yes, the sound played over our stereo system reminded me of the worst recordings from the 1930's. I did find that listening through headphones made the sound more bearable. There also were some gaps in three of the recordings that were filled by using other earlier recordings by William Kapell: a gap at the end of the third movement of the Third Piano Concerto, the closing bars of Gates of Kiev and the first movement of the Bach Suite.

The performances are wonderful and demonstrate Kapell's range of expression from the delicacy of Mozart to the dissonances of Prokofiev. The Mussorgsky is magical; the subtle shadings of the Suite bergamasque are marvelous to hear. The Chopin, particularly the Scherzo, is played with great passion and energy. The second disc hold music Kapell had never recorded: Debussy's Suite bergamasque, Chopin's Barcarolle and Scherzo No. 1, and Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7. When one considers that Kapell could be alive today the shortness of his time is brought all the more into focus and the music on these discs becomes all the more precious and remarkable. It is difficult to assign stars to this collection. The sound may be poor but the performances are priceless. So the reason I have assigned 5 stars is due to the importance of the final performances of William Kapell.

Recorded from radio broadcasts at Melbourne Town Hall, Australia in 1953.

Disc 1

Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No.3, with Victorian SO (Bernard Heinze) / 1 October (A brief section missing in the 3rd movement, from when the original disc had to be turned over while recording, has been patched with the Toronto Symphony recording of five years earlier)

Bach - Suite in Am BWV818 / 21 July (The missing 1st movement is substituted by the commercial recording of 1947)

Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition / 21 July (The closing section of the Great Gate of Kiev was not broadcast, so the same section from Frick recital is tacked on)

Disc 2

God Save the Queen* / 25 July

Mozart - Sonata No.16 / 25 July

Debussy - Suite bergamasque* / 28 July

Prelude
Menuet
Clair de Lune
Passepied

Chopin / 28 July

Barcarolle*
Nocturne Op.55 No.2
Scherzo No.1*

Prokofiev - Sonata No.7* / 25 July

*New to Kapell discography


Bad news first; surface noise is very heavy in all these recordings, particularly in Rachmaninov's 3rd concerto, the noise level becomes unbearable at times. The engineer says, as a reason, that the source discs are 50 years old, but comprehensive noise reduction was avoided in order to preserve the sound of various instruments. I personally think a little bit more noise reduction should have been applied. The complete change of sonics at the closing of 'Pictures' is really off-putting - the two different sources just do not merge nicely. The magical moments in Clair de lune and Chopin Scherzo are marred by talking voices (possibly coming from other broadcast rooms?)

Good news; The patch-work in the 3rd movement of Rachmaninov concerto is superbly done and hardly noticeable. And the performance itself borders on the super-human and the other worldly. Kapell possesses Horowitz' brilliance and Richter's ability to lose oneself completely in music. That is also evident in the performance of Bach's Am Suite, Mussorgsky's 'Pictures' and Debussy's works. Chopin's Scherzo No.1 is played with astonishing emotional intensity which matches Richter's accounts. Kapell plays Prokofiev's Sonata No.7 in surprisingly relaxed tempi. Although it lacks the demonic edge of Richter (I disagree with the producer who describes Kapell's rendition 'demonic'), Kapell masterfully captures the subtle change of moods and he emphasizes the contrast between fast and slow sections, which makes this performance not only electrifying, but rich.

It is another tragedy that such an outstanding pianist was so poorly recorded, but on the other hand, one should be grateful that these recordings survived at all, because these are a very precious document of the last stage of the already accomplished pianist and artist (Kapell himself would definitely desagree). Only God knows what he would have become, if his life weren't cut short by the tragic air crash.

I have found that there are two types of people who listen to classical music. There are those who listen to a particular work in the early phase of building their knowledge or library. These people are often swept up in the glories of the music, and fail to distinguish between the individual performance or interpretation of the piece with the piece itself. (Many of these folks post reviews on amazon with headings that say something like "Best Performance of Beethoven's 5th symphony EVER!!!") I admire their excitement and zeal, and given the atrophy facing the market for classical music I welcome their prostelytizing for an ever shrinking classical audience.

The second group of people do a deeper kind of listening. They (we) do a deeper listening into the music - gleaning new perspectives and insights from particular performances. Folks whose knowledge of music goes beyond mine; pointing out differences between the performance and the composer's score. The kind of folks who own several sets of Beethoven piano sonatas, but continue to return to Schnabel, despite the age of the recordings, to hear the hidden glories that lie within.

It is this second group of people who will enjoy these recordings. And there are enjoyable. Immensely enjoyable in fact. I really didn't know what to expect, reading as I did that these recordings originated from acetates recorded off a radio. I don't know what type of radios they have in Australia. I know that they have some large, ungainly mammals down under, but they must have some pretty large radios because these recordings have a pretty full frequency spectrum. Good texture in brass and strings, and more importantly, the beauty of tone characteristic of Kapell.

That's the good news. The bad news, as noted in other reviews, is that there is a tremendous amount of surface noise. Constant, continual scratching and hissing from the acetates. Now, I'm one of those folks who prefers this conservative approach to noise reduction, rather than diminish the full sonic spectrum I noted earlier. Back to Schnabel, it's the difference between the Pearl remasters of the sonatas, and the much less expensive EMI set. I conur with the decision that the producers have made, but be forewarned: this should NOT be your initial exposure to this music.

On the other hand, if it IS your initial exposure Kapell sets the bar quite high for subsequent performances. There were moments in the Rachmaninov when my mouth fell open - especially in the final movement. It is the ease with which he plays this piece; you can tell that he is taking delight in what he is accomplishing. In the liner notes, Kapell writes of the difference between a craftsman and an artist. Make no mistake - this is playing from an artist of the very highest caliber.

If you can listen "through" the imperfect sound, you really shouldn't hesitate. Especially for what this set is selling for an amazon. Be forewarned though: when I initially put this disc on, my wife, a trained mezzo, looked at me incredulously and asked "WHAT are we listening to?". But if you turn the lights off, sit still, and close your eyes you will be transported back through time, and will be able to re-live some of the precious moments that Kapell was truly among the Gods.

This is a gem of a recording. Even with the quality of the playing, it may not be one you return to often due to the surface noise. But it is definitely a recording that needs to be heard and experienced by discerning students of pianism.

For better or worst, this artistic release was at last the final materialization of a long expected dream from many hard fans around the world.

The very fact the incalculable value of these historical recordings literally shade all the acoustic distortions present. Obviously I am extremely optimistic due the fact the high management of the label makes a major and more treatment of the quality of the sound.

Kapell was one of the most prominent and active forerunners about Rachmaninoff in the Westerns hemisphere, even though Vladimir Horowitz, Emil Gilels or Sviatoslav Richter, who were enrooted by reasons of birthplace.
The enormous difference between Kapell's approach and the rest of all the rest of pianists after him was that sense of urgency, nostalgic introspection, incorporeal lyricism and epic wilderness William conferred to every one of the set of these piano concerts. He never incurred in excess of theatrical poses or even cheap exhibitionism of virtuosity (which by itself was notorious, since the first bar).

"The pictures at an exhibition" is for the immense majority of pianists, a piece that allows to exhibit the technical musculature of the player. The same may be said about the orchestral version. But there are so few soloists and conductors who are well aware, that first and foremost "The pictures" is an enormous elegy to a missed friend, permeated here and there with certain humoristic hints. But the central structure is basically the last farewell to Victor. Kapell made a zealous fingering around every variation, expressing (through the smart use of the rubato) with meridian honesty the austere solemnity that surrounds this Op.

Mozart's Sonata is played with elegance and pristine musicality. The Bergamasque Suite is played with incorporeal fluidity and stratospheric vision which makes a showy and enjoyable experience.

Chopin's Barcarolle is finely performed (although it doesn't match with the unsurpassable version of Michelangeli in Turin Festival, 1962 or Ivan Moravec, 1965, for instance). The epic nature of Chopin's Scherzos were probably the best fitted pieces for this impetuous artist. Despite of the fact I have listened other versions in the market, nobody can match with him in those pieces (perhaps I should cite two optional exceptions Nelson Freire and Arthur Rubinstein).

Prokoviev's Seventh Sonata is played with the demanded bitter astringency. The pretended elegance of the introduction in the First movement conveys the listener to a macabre military march, spiced of the well known cynical accent of the Russian composer. I would say that with the honored exception of Gyorgy Sandor (Vox label, 1966 and still available set), nobody does it better.

William Kapell was mot only the most gifted North American pianist ever born.He was among the reduced list of keyboard giants whose ability top express the unsaid and unspoken significance far beyond the score contained. A true poet of the piano. I mean he is in the same level of Lipatti, Michelangeli, Fisher, Kempff, Moravec, Katchen, Badura Skoda or Sandor.

Absolutely recommended.

I have been an ardent admirer of William Kapell for years and thought that it was time for me to put my "two cents" in.I have collected all
I could get my hands on.Not just Kapell recordings but newspaper clippings,and even publications featuring his letters and work diaries.
Now to the recording at hand.I could easily become an "arm chair" sound
engineer like some of the other reviewers,but I wont.I am just so grateful
and full of joy that these recordings are available at all.I am also grateful to William Kapell for how he suffered for his art with all of his hard work.The great ones make it look and sound so easy.I continually
gain so much from hearing these interpretations,and I hope that the well
is not totally dry as far as undiscovered recordings. BRAVO!!!

The parties involved in processing the acetate discs of William Kapell's performances in WILLIAM KAPELL reDISCOVERED have, in my opinion, managed masterfully to present them in vivid sound. The original discs were recorded from radio broadcasts by an amateur in Australia in 1953 and, while noisy, are given to us WITHOUT the kind of noise reduction and filtration that dulls tone and severely masks overtones. Praise to RCA/Sony/BMG Masterworks.

When I first listened to this recording (it came two days ago) I thought that Kapell's sound was agressive, (it is), he rushed (he does) and that his sense of proportion was often out of whack with what's really going on (sometimes it definitely is). But when all was said and done, I realized that despite those moments where things get slightly out of hand, the overall idea, the ebb and flow of many of these pieces, was consistently beautiful and harmonious in the sense that everything seemed to have its natural place in the scheme of things.

I'll be as brief as I am able to be. The opening Rachmaninoff concerto is a very noisy recording, but in my professional opinion, had that noise been removed, there would remain NO aura of Kapell's sound, which is in abundance here. There is a generalized broadcast haze hanging over the entire set. At big fortissimi in the concerto the sound tends to break up, but I don't think this is Kapell's doing. This is a jury-rigged recording setup and that's the culprit. Kapell proves that he can handle any tempo or gradation of the sound. There is a clear legato that is even audible through the swooshing noise that occasionally shows up. And the cadenza in the first movement gives the sense of exactly what the CD is going to be about: lots of energy with plenty in reserve.

The Bach is lovely. It is delicate without being narcissistic. It's the sort of Bach one hears from Landowska, although the rhythm is not as spectacular as hers; the other Bach proponent that comes to mind is Arrau. You'll have to hunt to find those CDs now.

The Mussorkgsky is played as it should be - with amazing brilliance.

The second CD runs the gamut. Kapell's Mozart is a welcome relief from many of today's tedious one dimentional conceptions of "music for babies"!

The Debussy is the BIG surprise. I'm reminded a little of Gieseking, but Kapells is fuller than his on the older 78s. Its the surprise of the set.

The Chopin has some problems from time to time, but that's because I'm comparing the pieces to my favorite performances. When I stop doing that they seem far more successful in their own right. Kapell does have a tendency to rush the middle of phrases, and that occasionally gets in the way as you can sense the next transition will arrive awkwardly. The Barcarolle is fat and juicy. The Nocturne, Op. 55, #2 in E flat, is almost as great as Friedman's unique vision. This gem scares most pianists to death because of its many sustained voices all going at once. Kapell givse it a very good shot, but his voicing is often a bit heavy. For a laugh, try the usually wonderful Rubinstein if you want to hear it go completely off the tracks! I do believe the best known Chopin interpreter is actually sight reading in the recording session.

Prokofiev's Seventh Sonata is the capper to this set. At first the rushing bothered me. I am almost cultish about Glenn Gould's extraordinary playing of this piece, both on CD and video. This despite the fact that Gould more often than not leaves me utterly bored. To the contrary, the third movement tocatta, is played just a bit slower than is usually heard. Gould's is still the most fantastic I've ever found for rhythmic constancy mixed with variation, while never once breaking the perfect pulse. But Kapell pushes and pulls and ultimately manages to put everything in its place, and all this on the live concert stage.

Concerning the controversy over the sound; on first hearing it is thoroughly evident that what Jon Samuels, the producer/engineer, first had to work with was a near disaster. There were noises caused not by over playing of the acetates. Samuels makes a very clear eyed argument for his work in his own notes in the booklet. Most of the noises that are left behind are lengthy in nature, and to remove something of that sort will also create a "new" set of sounds that are even less appealing, because they generally resemble nails on the chalk board. For those of us who started with '78s I say don't worry. And if you are just coming to the party via an Ipod, now you can see what we used to put up with from all the major record companies. My hat's off to Jon Samuels for one of the most balanced noise reduction attempts ever to be put on commercial CD. It is a joy to find an engineer who like his fellow traveler, Ward Marston, doesn't remove all noise only to create artificial sounds that are explained away with nonsense by those who operate under the credo of "cleaning up ALL extraneous noise", simply because they are able to do so. No matter what anyone may say, removing all noise would simply mean that Kapell might as well be Bela Lugosi. One wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Better to gently "take off the curse", as my mentor/engineer used to tell me, from the noisy patch so that one can at least accept the noise because all the music is still audible and the noise is now dimished if not gone assuring NO other sounds have been introduced.

Finally, throughout the second CD (I listened on Sennheiser HD600 headphones) I could hear RF, or "radio frequency noise". That is, the recording cables or mics were acting as receivers and occasionally you can hear people talking at a very low level in quieter moments. I did't really hear this on my speakers, but my AC is running right now :)

Overall, this is a great compilation, mostly heretofore unknown to us; Get it while its on the shelves!

The sound is sub-par, and some of the music is not among my favorites (not sure how much more of Rach 3rd, Khachaturian, or Moussorgski's Pictures I can possibly take), but the playing is glorious and the set does complete my personal Kapell collection; so, five stars without reservation.