The enduring nature of recordings can suggest that a musical performer’s style and vision remain fixed; however, like anyone, musicians evolve over time in how they perform and express themselves. For those whose careers spanned decades, changes in interpretative depth and technical facility are to be expected, but these shifts need not diminish the value of either their early or late recordings. In fact, exploring performances from throughout an artist’s life can be an invaluable way to appreciate the full range of their musical gifts.

Wilhelm Backhaus enjoyed one of the longest recording careers of any pianist, a remarkable 61-year span that began in 1908, when he was just 24, and ended with his final recital being recorded a week before his death in 1969 at the age of 85. He is best known for his contemplative readings of Beethoven, whose works he began recording in the 1920s and whose complete sonatas he recorded in the early 1950s and again in the ’60s (although he died before completing a second traversal of the Hammerklavier). Understandably, the more widely distributed recordings from later in his life have forged a particular perception of his artistry, and those who associate Backhaus with these albums – often showing his elderly face framed by a grizzled mop of white hair – may be surprised by the fire and spontaneity of his pioneering earlier recordings, which are now more broadly accessible thanks to the APR label.

Born in Leipzig in 1884, Backhaus began piano lessons at the age of four and entered the Leipzig Conservatory at six to study with Alois Reckendorf. He then took some 25 lessons with Eugen d’Albert, a Liszt pupil whom he heard perform both Brahms piano concertos in 1896 with Brahms himself conducting. He made his recital debut at the age of 15 in 1899, and after winning the Anton Rubinstein Prize in Paris in 1905 (Béla Bartók was placed second) his career quickly took off. From that point until his final days, Backhaus was an internationally respected pianist with a demanding schedule.

When Backhaus entered the studio for his first recording session for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company on September 29, 1908, he cut a debut disc that runs counter to the image his later recordings would cement: Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor, Op 3 No 2, a piece he never recorded again. It is in fact the only Rachmaninov in his discography, yet it is a compelling interpretation, as finely and creatively executed as the Liszt Liebestraum No 3 that accompanied it.

In 1909 Backhaus made the first-ever recording of a Bach Prelude and Fugue, as well as the very first piano concerto recording – a drastically truncated version of the Grieg Concerto. While the latter is mostly a curio given its nearly comical brevity and poor sound – his complete 1933 version is naturally far more rewarding – these early honours reflect the pianist’s stature and trailblazing role as a recording artist.

Backhaus cut nearly three hours’ worth of discs using the ‘acoustical’ process – before microphones, a cone-shaped horn was used to amplify sound – but even through these records’ constricted sonic framework, we can glean his beautiful tonal palette, transparent voicing, deft articulation and impressive dexterity. Not all of these find him at his best – early studio conditions did little to inspire a musician’s creative expression – but many of the performances are striking. Among the most charming are 1916 recordings of two pieces by Anton Rubinstein, played with elegance, lyrical phrasing and exquisite timing.

With the introduction of microphone-based ‘electrical’ recording in 1925, Backhaus became even more prolific in the studio. He was the first pianist to record the complete Chopin Études, Opp 10 and 25, and he did so in just two days – 4 and 5 January 1928 – along with an array of other works: Chopin’s Waltz in E flat major, Op 18, Schumann-Liszt ‘Widmung’, Smetana’s Polka No 3, Albéniz’s ‘Triana’, Moszkowski’s Capriccio espagnol and his own arrangements of Mozart’s Serenade (‘Deh, vieni alla finestra’) from Don Giovanni and Schubert’s Marche militaire No 3. This was done when each 78rpm disc required all-at-once takes of four to five minutes with no possibility of editing any dropped notes; all of the readings set down in these two sessions comprise first or second takes, yet the performances are fresh, vibrant and technically masterly.

For those who know Backhaus from his introspective interpretations on 1950s and ’60s LPs of Austro-German Classical and Romantic compositions, both the temperament and repertoire of these early recordings may come as a revelation: he displays stunning virtuosity, emotional expansiveness and fearless abandon – not reckless, but certainly more daring than is usually heard in his later recordings. His 1928 account of his own arrangement of Mozart’s ‘Deh, vieni alla finestra’ is among the most glorious of all piano recordings, overflowing with charm, poise and a singing line of extraordinary beauty.

Backhaus’s pre-war recordings of Beethoven – two concertos and four sonatas – are a fascinating fusion of the pianist’s innate reverence for the music, which continued to deepen, and the vivacious temperament he exhibited in his younger years. In the 1930s Backhaus also recorded a fair amount of Brahms – including several first recordings – with an idiomatic blend of vigour and lyricism. The selection of works is somewhat haphazard, and unfortunately HMV didn’t seem to value having a more comprehensive Brahms series in the same way it did with Artur Schnabel’s Beethoven or Edwin Fischer’s Well-Tempered Clavier in the same decade. Backhaus’s impassioned 1937 reading of Schumann’s C major Fantasie is also superb, making the relative lack of this composer’s music in his discography during this period all the more disappointing.

After switching labels from HMV to Decca in 1950, Backhaus focused primarily on Beethoven and Brahms, his playing becoming ever more contemplative yet grounded, with a robust directness that seems to match contemporary reviews of Beethoven’s and Brahms’s own pianism. He also set down works of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann, and though he continued to record some Chopin and Liszt, these later interpretations are generally less successful than his earlier accounts. His Mozart sonatas in particular are unexpectedly and disappointingly rigid and lacking in vitality – some of his concert recordings of this repertoire are far more satisfying. Yet when inspired during these later years, he could deliver deeply compelling performances that fused intellectual clarity with his inquisitive musical spirit.

Like many artists, Backhaus often seemed more at ease in concert than in the studio. One of the highlights of his discography is his 30 March 1954 recital at Carnegie Hall, recorded during his return to New York after a 28-year absence. Olin Downes wrote in The New York Times that many ‘may have been surprised that a pianist in his 70th year could play with such vitality, beauty of tone, and strength without hardness’, praising ‘the complete authority, spontaneity, and spirituality of his playing’. The ambitious programme included five Beethoven sonatas from the Pathétique to Op 111, and was followed by eight encores to which the audience’s reaction went from enthusiastic to wildly ecstatic; highlights include Schubert-Liszt Soirée de Vienne No 6 and Chopin’s Étude in F minor, Op 25 No 2, performances that reveal that Backhaus still possessed the sumptuous charm, flexibility and technical command heard in his finest 78rpm discs.

Even in his 80s, Backhaus could be remarkably persuasive in the studio. His 1967 recording of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with Karl Böhm is one of his most successful, made nearly three decades after their stellar 1939 collaboration, a moving performance full of surprising strength and nuance. (Interestingly, this recording is referenced in Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood.)

Backhaus’s final recital took place on 28 June 1969, and it echoes the fabled last concert of his younger friend and colleague Dinu Lipatti, with whom he had performed Bach two-keyboard concertos some 20 years earlier. Like Lipatti, Backhaus interspersed his programme with improvisatory preluding. He was ultimately unable to complete the concert due to illness: after suffering a heart attack near the end of the programme, he returned after a brief pause to play three encores before being taken to hospital. Fortunately, the recital was recorded in full and it reveals playing of ethereal beauty. Those final pieces – Schumann’s ‘Des Abends’ and ‘Warum?’ and a Schubert Impromptu – provide a deeply touching close to a monumental career. He died a week later.

Reflecting on his favourite composer, Backhaus once said, ‘I try to play Beethoven as I feel it, as I try to imagine the man – not what story he is telling me, but what he is feeling,’ adding that ‘his titanic spirit and intensity of thought seem to suggest a god or superman. His music satisfies my nature, in joy or sorrow, like no other.’ Throughout his vast and varied discography, the intellectual rigour, emotional depth and spiritual conviction that Backhaus both admired and sought to portray – the human and beyond – continue to resonate decades later. 

This feature originally appeared in the SUMMER 2025 issue of International Piano – Subscribe Today