Walter Coppedge

Piano legends of the 20th-century in the spotlight: after Claudio Arrau, it is now Walter Gieseking to be honored with an complete boxset of his Warner recordings.

Penultimate volume of Mozart’s works performed by Walter Gieseking for his bicentenary homage.

One of Mozart's longest and most demanding piano sonatas, this superb work was almost certainly designed as a concert vehicle for the composer himself, rather than being intended as teaching material. Like its immediate predecessors (K. 330-332), the B flat sonata was originally believed to have been composed some years earlier than its present dating of 1783. Modern paper analysis has placed its probable composition in Linz, where Mozart and his wife Constanze stayed for three weeks in November on their return journey from Salzburg to Vienna. In a letter to his father dated October 31, Mozart told Leopold that because he would be giving a concert in the theater in Linz on November 4, he was having to write a new symphony "at breakneck speed," not having any of his other symphonies with him. The result was the Symphony No. 36 in C, K. 425("Linz"), It would seem plausible that he wrote the sonata for the same concert.

Here is one of the last recordings made by Walter Gieseking in late 1956, from the same day he performed his legendary "Lyric Pieces" by Grieg and only a few weeks before he passed away.

The foruth release of Walter Gieseking’s mythical 1953 Debussy cycle.

As part of our Gieseking retrospective, here is a bouquet of encores, short pieces particularly close to the heart of the pianist and mostly hits of his discography, from Debussy and Grieg to Mendelssohn and Mozart.

Johann Schneider was a German organist, violinist and composer (1702, Lautertal–1788, Leipzig). He was a pupil of Nicolas Mueller in his hometown and continued his studies with Johann Hartmann Reinmann in Saalfeld between 1717 and 1720. Around 1720, he became Johann Sebastian Bach's organ and harpsichord pupil in Köthen. In conjunction with his keyboard work with Bach, he studied violin with Johann Gottlieb Graun in Merseburg and with Johann Graf in Rudolstadt. In 1721, Johann Schneider became court organist and first violinist (concertmaster) in Saalfeld in his native Coburg. From 1726 he was employed as violinist in the court chapel in Weimar (Weimarer Hofkapelle), and he was later appointed organist of the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig in 1729, holding this position for the rest of his career. Schneider achieved a commendable reputation as a truly great organist, as Lorenz Mizler quotes: 'His organ preludes are of such good taste in this field, with the exception of Mr. Bach, whose pupil he was, that one cannot hear better in Leipzig'.

Here comes the last album of Warner's Walter Gieseking retrospective with Beethoven’s late piano sonatas.