Walter Gieseking - Biography
Walter Gieseking distinguished German pianist was born in Lyons France to German parents on November 5th 1895 and died in London on October 25th 1956. Gieseking father was an entomologist and doctor who practiced his profession in France and Italy. Walter Gieseking taught himself music as a youth and eventually was formally trained by Karl Leimer at the Hannover Conservatory. He graduated in 1916 and was drafted into the German Army during the First World War. After the war he started his career as an accompanist to singers and as a chamber musician was soon to become a soloist. Geiseking in his early career had an affinity for contemporary music and performed the music of Busoni, Schonberg and Hindemith. He also premiered the Piano Concerto of arch conservative Hans Pfitzner in 1923 (there is a broadcast performance of him performing it decades later).Gieseking by the early twenties had a successful career as a soloist and had made his English debut in 1923 and his American debut in 1926. Gieseking quickly developed a reputation as a superb interpreter of what was then the contemporary piano music of Debussy and Ravel. Perhaps it was his early childhood spent in France but his performances of their music had a subtlety and delicacy in phrasing, tempo and dynamics that surpassed all his contemporizes. Gieseking developed an amazingly broad repertoire particularly for a pianist of the German school. Besides Debussy and Ravel he has a great reputation as a Mozart specialist and gave numerous performances of the Bach Keyboard works on the piano and even performed Rachmaninov’s notoriously difficult Third Piano Concerto. By the late 1920’s he started recording on the English Columbia label and throughout the 1930’s developed particularly for the 78 rpm period a large discography. Gieseking had a very successful English and U.S concert career. Unfortunately he gave some interviews in the late 1930’s that implied that the authoritarian nature of the Hitler regime was exaggerated by the American press that would come back to haunt him later on.
After the outbreak of War rumors swirled around America and Brittan that Gieseking performed regularly in occupied France and he was trusted enough to tour Switzerland without fear that he would attempt to immigrate. Gieseking in truth was not a Nazi but at worst a German nationalist who was ardently pro German. Though giving concerts in Paris showed poor judgment, he was immensely popular there and was master of French music. A number of performances that were recorded for radio broadcasts (some in experimental stereo) have surfaced after Gieseking’s death that have very valuable performances of Bach and Schumann that he never made commercial recordings of. He was accused of collaboration by the Allied tribunals and eventually acquitted but not as easily as let us say the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler who didn’t perform in occupied countries and had a documented record of helping Jewish colleagues get out of Germany. Gieseking was scheduled to give concerts at Carnegie Hall but a storm of protest forced the cancelation of the concerts and Gieseking was not allowed entry into the country but immigration officials. Eventually Gieseking was able to perform in America but always to be dogged by protest. He was welcomed back into England and developed an artistic relationship with Walter Legge the famed EMI Columbia producer and they started in 1950 to record a good deal of Gieseking’s repertoire. Some critics have found these recordings artistically inferior to his pre war recordings but I find the difference marginal. Most famous of these recordings are his nearly complete recordings of Debussy’s solo piano music that have never been out of the catalog since they were released in the mid 1950’s. He also recorded the complete solo piano music of Mozart along with four his Piano Concertos. Superb recordings were made of Ravel, Brahms, Schumann and Grieg. Shortly before his death his wife was killed and he was seriously injured in a bus accident and this seemed to rob him of his vitality. Gieseking in photos during this period seems older than his years. While working on the completion his Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle for EMI in London he returned to his hotel died during the night on October 25th 1956.
Gieseking was a great performer who had a masterful technique and great musicianship. Unlike most soloists of his era who tended to be smaller than average he was a huge hulking man who belied his bulk by performing when required music with the utmost delicacy. The controversies of what he did or didn’t do in Nazi Germany are mostly forgotten and he is remembered as one of the greatest instrumentalists of the first half of the 20th Century. Much of his huge discography is still available more than fifty years after his death.
