The most important
thing to note about these recordings
is that they’re not commercial recordings
but the live post-War traversals that
have been released before. The Pathétique
was out on Orfeo – there’s also a set
of 78s from 1938 and a post-War October
1952 EMI LP. The live Pastorale and
Waldstein were once released on a Cetra
LP back in the 1970s. They were all,
I should advise you, released on a double
CD set not so long ago by Music and
Arts [CD880]. Nowhere however in Archipel’s
non-existent documentation do we learn
the source material (they do at least
spell out the dates of the performances
and that they were live). These recordings
were actually made in 1952 and 1954
by Bavarian Radio where, presumably,
the original tapes still reside. To
judge by the heavily over-processed
and murky sound this company hasn’t
had access to them.
The playing itself
is imbued with all Fischer’s fallible
humanity. The Pathétique is serious,
occasionally enlivened by some staccato
phrasing and heavily masculine. He’s
characteristically quite slow in the
Adagio cantabile and maybe the left
hand is inclined toward a non-rubato
metricality here and there but the finale
is strongly projected. The Pastorale
isn’t consistently successful because
there are some technical problems in
the long opening Allegro but there’s
commensurate wit in the Andante and
a strong finale. Despite a few negligible
slips in the opening of the Waldstein
we can hear Fischer’s exceptional control
at its fullest, though the high point
is surely the intense slow movement.
No one would claim that the Prestissimo
conclusion to the work is a model of
clarity but this is a tangible sense
of rightness in his drive. Some people
will find this indulgence of a worn
technique over-generous but Fischer’s
all embracingness, to me, is far more
important.
In view of the skimpy
presentation and the veiled sound I
think you should give this a miss.
Jonathan Woolf
Edwin Fischer (piano) 
