Lili Kraus: The Complete Parlophone, Ducretet-Thomson & Les Discophiles Français Recordings 1933-195

While the outstanding reputation of the Hungarian-born pianist Lili Kraus was built on a comparatively narrow repertoire of Viennese classics (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert), her experience as a musician and as a human being was of extraordinary breadth. A pupil of such towering figures as Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and Artur Schnabel, she made an international career from the age of 18, becoming a professor at the Vienna Conservatory at the age of 20, and over the years she lived in Europe (Austria, Italy, UK, Germany, France) and the USA – where she died in 1986, having given her final concert in 1982– but also in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. It was while touring Indonesia in 1943 that she and her family were captured by Japanese forces, and she subsequently spent three years in prison camps, where studying her repertoire in her head helped her to survive hard labour. As she said: “Stimulating unsuspected resources of courage, my faith and the music vibrating in me saved me. That energy would never leave me again.” She relaunched her career after the War in Australasia, before returning to Europe (1948) and then moving to South Africa for a period. In the 1950s, she spent much time in France and moved for a time to London, but finally settled in the US in 1967. Her long recording career spanned the eras of the 78, the mono LP and the stereo LP. All the recordings in this 31-CD anthology date from a 25-year period on either side of World War II – 1933-1958. In addition to many solo recordings, they document her collaboration with two major violinists who had led great European orchestras: in Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn with the Polish-American Simon (Szymon) Goldberg, who spent four years as leader of the Berlin Philharmonic before ostracisation by the Nazis, and in Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert with Willi Boskovsky, famed for his association with the Vienna Philharmonic. In 2006, Gramophone, affirming the durability of her achievement, wrote: “Her superb playing in various violin sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart set standards that have not been matched since the 1930s,” In addition to works by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, the anthology includes music by Chopin, Brahms and Bartók. This collection gathers together all the recordings Kraus made for three separate labels – Parlophone, Ducretet-Thomson and Discophiles Français. 80% of them have never before been made available on CD in Europe, and all tracks have been re-mastered in 24 BIT / 96 kHz, which represents a significant gain in audio quality over any previous releases. The New York Times’ critic Harold C. Schonberg described Lili Kraus as ''a pianist with taste, skill and heart”. In an interview in 1969 she spoke thus of her approach to her art: “In the really great works of music even a scale has something to say. And I assure myself the luxury of playing only the great works of music ... A great interpretation must go far beyond not only the instrument but the music itself, and great music tries to manifest nothing less than the cosmos. This cosmos includes all that exists: the music of the spheres in all its appearances, whether water, wind, bird noise, storm, lightning, thunder, or the sweetest rustling of the leaf. Great composers like Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, of course, had such fine perception, and heard these things within themselves so clearly, that they could give them immortal form.”