![Pierre Fournier,Friedrich Gulda – Beethoven: Complete Works for Cello and Piano (Remastered) (2006/2019) [FLAC 24bit, 192 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/01/18/zuz7ef6nqgmmc_600.md.jpg)
Pierre Fournier,Friedrich Gulda – Beethoven: Complete Works for Cello and Piano (Remastered) (2006/2019) [FLAC 24bit, 192 kHz]
It would be difficult to rank these three complete collections of Beethoven’s works for cello and piano, recorded by Pierre Fournier with three different partners, all distinguished Beethoven experts: Arthur Schnabel (1947-48), Friedrich Gulda (1959) and Wilhelm Kempff (1965). Fournier and Gulda are like fire and water. The French cellist provides guidance to the solitary and somewhat untameable Gulda, who himself admitted to having learned some discipline over the course of the recording, and kept a debt of gratitude for Fournier his whole life. The result is a tremendous show of mutual attention and a clarity of expression, without any pomposity or pretentiousness. – François Hudry
![Friedrich Gulda – The Gulda Touch, Vol. 2 (2023) [FLAC 24 bit, 48 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2023/09/04/h100jd0dcgi9a_600.md.jpg)
Friedrich Gulda – The Gulda Touch, Vol. 2 (2023) [FLAC 24 bit, 48 kHz]
Gulda began playing the piano at the age of seven. In 1942 he began music studies with Bruno Seidlhofer (piano) and Joseph Marx (music theory and composition) at the Vienna Academy of Music, now the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. At the age of 16, he succeeded at the Geneva International Music Competition and quickly rose to world fame thereafter. His extremely precise interpretations of Mozart and Beethoven, which are particularly faithful to the original works, are still considered milestones in the history of interpretation. Characteristic of Gulda is his extremely precise and rhythmically accentuated playing.
His repertoire included works by J. S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy and Ravel, with his interpretations of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier causing a particular stir. In his concerts, he often played works by Bach faithfully on a clavichord.
Gulda had an excellent memory. He needed, for example (as workshop participants report), to look at the musical text of Robert Schumann’s “Forest Scenes” for only a few minutes before playing the work from memory.
One of Gulda’s most famous students is the Argentine pianist Martha Argerich.
![Friedrich Gulda – Beethoven & Haydn: Piano Works (Live) (2022) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2022/04/07/f4kjipvpwlruc_600.md.jpg)
Friedrich Gulda – Beethoven & Haydn: Piano Works (Live) (2022) [FLAC 24bit, 96 kHz]
Friedrich Gulda (* 16. Mai 1930 in Wien; † 27. Jänner 2000 in Weißenbach am Attersee) war ein österreichischer Pianist und Komponist.
Gulda begann im Alter von sieben Jahren mit dem Klavierspiel. 1942 nahm er eine Musikausbildung bei Bruno Seidlhofer (Klavier) und Joseph Marx (Musiktheorie und Komposition) an der Wiener Musikakademie, der heutigen Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien, auf. Mit 16 Jahren reüssierte er beim Internationalen Genfer Musikwettbewerb und gelangte danach rasch zu Weltruhm. Seine äußerst exakten, um besondere Werktreue bemühten Mozart- und Beethoven-Interpretationen gelten bis heute als Meilensteine in der Interpretationsgeschichte. Charakteristisch für Gulda ist ein äußerst präzises und rhythmisch akzentuiertes Spiel.
Sein Repertoire umfasste Werke von J. S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy und Ravel, wobei vor allem seine Interpretationen der Klaviersonaten Beethovens und des Wohltemperierten Klaviers von Bach Aufsehen erregten. In seinen Konzerten spielte er Werke Bachs häufig originalgetreu auf einem Clavichord.
Gulda hatte ein hervorragendes Gedächtnis. Er brauchte sich zum Beispiel (wie Workshopteilnehmer berichten) den Notentext von Robert Schumanns „Waldszenen“ nur wenige Minuten lang anzuschauen, um das Werk dann auswendig zu spielen.
Eine der berühmtesten Schülerinnen Guldas ist die argentinische Pianistin Martha Argerich.
![Friedrich Gulda – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 21 (2020) [FLAC 24 bit, 192 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2023/02/07/fp84x72ff06ca_600.md.jpg)
Friedrich Gulda – Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 20 & 21 (2020) [FLAC 24 bit, 192 kHz]
Friedrich Gulda is known to all. He is the musical wizard with the embroidered cap, an artist who is equally at home in jazz, the Viennese lied, or the works of the Viennese Classic. Gulda might have only performed a small number of his Austrian compatriot’s 27 piano concerto ? but with these few he certainly created a sensation. That the present recording of the Concertos Nos. 20 and 21, even after 25 years, is still regarded as ranking among the very best performances is something that can be heard after just a few bars. The minor-key first movement of No. 20 begins with a measured tempo and precise articulation, then the piano joins in with almost sober clarity and proceeds to lead a concentrated, tightly enmeshed conversation with the orchestra.
![Friedrich Gulda – The Gulda Touch, Vol. 1 (2023) [FLAC 24 bit, 48 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2023/09/04/t0311oudlpxrc_600.md.jpg)
Friedrich Gulda – The Gulda Touch, Vol. 1 (2023) [FLAC 24 bit, 48 kHz]
Friedrich Gulda (* May 16, 1930 in Vienna; † January 27, 2000 in Weißenbach am Attersee) was an Austrian pianist and composer.
![Friedrich Gulda, Wiener Philharmoniker, Claudio Abbado – Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 25 & 27 (1974/2018) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2023/02/07/xoo8qef7p7kja_600.md.jpg)
Friedrich Gulda, Wiener Philharmoniker, Claudio Abbado – Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 25 & 27 (1974/2018) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]
The year 1786 was one of Mozart’s most fruitful, full of diverse works in his most mature vein. It was crowned with the production of the C major Concerto, K. 503, and the “Prague” Symphony. This concerto is the last of the series in C major, and combines with its companion K. 491 in C minor, which in turn succeeded the A major K. 488, to make a trilogy that has been likened to the three great symphonies of two years later. Whatever the family similarities between the other pieces may be, there is no doubt that the C major Concerto, like the C major Symphony, show Mozart glorying in the complete mastery of means and offering a certain Olympian grandeur that at the same time does not exclude his more tender, eloquent vein.
![Friedrich Gulda – Bach – Gulda – Clavichord (The Mono Tapes) (2018) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]](https://imghd.xyz/images/2023/02/07/mc07htju50faa_600.md.jpg)
Friedrich Gulda – Bach – Gulda – Clavichord (The Mono Tapes) (2018) [FLAC 24 bit, 96 kHz]
Once you open this album on Qobuz, you are in danger of being thrown into an abyss of perplexity. But once you get over the initial surprise, you may find yourself asking if you’ve been had: if you’re the butt of a joke by Friedrich Gulda, who has pawned his concert Steinway for a badly-tuned Japanese koto. But it’s “just” Gulda playing Bach on a clavichord that seems to be buckling under pressure or thanks to funny sound engineering. And then, slowly, it works its charms on us, and we are willing participants in a sound-test by Friedrich Gulda on a mean instrument that he seems to be really beating up on, distorting the strings, trying to get at sounds that the humble clavichord really isn’t made for. It’s as if we’ve snuck in to grin at the sight of this musician playing extracts from the Well-Tempered Clavier on an instrument which is anything but. Recorded at home, or at a concert at the end of the 1970s, these records, now out in the light of day, bear witness to the pure-musical research of an artist who has never stopped questioning and pushing at the boundaries of musical convention. – François Hudry