# Transferring Beethoven and the elder Kempff



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

I've been transferring things from the DG "Beethoven Bicentennial Collection" LPs. Most of the piano sonatas - and piano parts in violin and cello sonatas - are performed by the septuagenarian Kempff. I have no significant complaints about his playing; there is enough 'poetry', and enough technique. The LPs, made in the US, contain some pretty bad vinyl though. Makes my choices based as much on what can be transferred as on what I really want to preserve.

Note that the "Collection" includes several of the violin sonatas with Menuhin from that famous-for-ironic-reasons set.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

That set was pressed in Canada, I believe by Capitol there. Mediocre to bad surfaces.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Vinyl was a pain. You'd put your LPs carefully away only to find them marked next time you got them out. I blessed the day CDs were invented.

I got a very cheap download of the 1950s Kempff playing Beethoven sonatas. Better than the later stereo, I think.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

bigshot said:


> That set was pressed in Canada, I believe by Capitol there. Mediocre to bad surfaces.


OK. The labels say 'made in USA', but then US manufacturers have been known to consider Canada a US province.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

DavidA said:


> Vinyl was a pain. You'd put your LPs carefully away only to find them marked next time you got them out. I blessed the day CDs were invented.
> 
> I got a very cheap download of the 1950s Kempff playing Beethoven sonatas. Better than the later stereo, I think.


Some folks will disagree with you regarding LPs, and some will even disagree about which Beethoven set is preferable. I read a review yesterday opining that the last mono set of the _concertos_ had better orchestral playing than the stereo set, but that Kempff was much better in stereo than he was in the previous decade in mono. Guess you have to hear for yourself, or roll the dice and hope.


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