Wonderful Lili Kraus

Very early student of Zoltan Kodaly and Bartok to Steuerman and she is only 22 years old when she herself becomes a professor at the Vienna Conservatory. It will continue to explore, including benefiting from the teaching of Artur Schnabel (under the guidance of Wilhelm Furtwängler), with which it will develop a particular interest in the great names of the School of Vienna. The thirties are the days of triumphant tours, recordings 78s, and its partnership with Szymon Goldberg with whom she forms a legendary duo. The war and its attendant horrors (with three years of captivity in the Japanese camps) will put his career on hold for several years. In the early fifties she will settle in France, then in London (at the death of her husband in 1956) and finally in the United States, where it definitively establish its Mozartian absolute legend.

The Lili Kraus repertoire focuses mainly on the Viennese classics: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert. That of course reflects the contents of this box of 31 remastered discs (where there are particular Szymon Goldberg, but the bow to Viennese accents accomplice Willy Boskovsky): 20 CDs are devoted to Mozart (including the integrals of Sonatas for Piano, Violin Sonatas and Trios), about 6 to Beethoven (with the complete Sonatas for violin, and Eroica Variations anthological), 2 like Schubert to Haydn; remains approximately 1 CD Total for beautiful recordings of pieces signed Bartok, Brahms and Chopin.

Lili Kraus, is first an elegant and sensitive playing with an exceptional sense of balance; a pianism without fuss, without speaking, unpretentious, simple but not always devoid of vitality and imagination. With a sense of nuance and musicality never faulted, it conveys an indescribable passion: that of life, natural, poetry, that of unfailing musical enjoyment.

Wonderful Lili Kraus, who was playing with his heart at your fingertips (as Clara Haskil with his soul, to borrow a phrase from one of my previous reviews). A box that is therefore indispensable for any piano enthusiast. Hopefully it will give other publishers (Sony, Vox, Vanguard) the desire to return to us the recordings of treasures of this great lady, who still sleep in their archives ...