Brahms Piano Concerto No.2, Mozart Piano Concerto No.27 : Backhaus, Bohm / Vienna Philharmonic (1968, 1960 Salzburg)

W.A. Mozart: Klavierkonzert Nr. 27 B-Dur KV 595
J. Brahms: Klavierkonzert Nr. 2 B-Dur op. 83

Wilhelm Backhaus (Klavier)
Wiener Philharmoniker (Orchester)
Karl Bohm (Dirigent)

The Salzburg performances of Wilhelm Backhaus, by contrast, all had something imperturbably monumental about them. For Backhaus, 2009 marked a double anniversary - the 125th anniversary of his birth and the fortieth of his death. The Austrian Radio archives contain tapes of him playing two concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Bohm, the first from 1960, the second from 1968, on both occasions in the Groses Festspielhaus, neither performance showing any signs of artistic compromise in spite of Backhaus’s advancing years. To Mozart’s final piano concerto, K 595 in B flat major, he brings extreme delicacy and a sense of rapt otherworldliness, whereas Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto has all the weight of tone that one could possibly want not only in the work’s chordal textures but also in its pounding passage-work. Nor is the concerto’s careful structure neglected by Bohm, who was no less strict with himself than he was with his partners when it was a question of imposing his commanding grasp of architectural form on a piece.( Orfeo )