Herbert von Karajan · Walter Gieseking · The Lucerne Concert 1954 · 2CD

We are honored to present a new release that documents the only known live recording of Walter Gieseking and Herbert von Karajan performing together. Captured during the 1954 Lucerne Festival, this newly unearthed recording features Gieseking’s interpretation of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, with Karajan conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra London. The artistic collaboration between Gieseking and Karajan began in 1935 with a performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto in Aachen and continued through the war years with renditions of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1941) and Schumann’s Piano Concerto (1944) with the Staatskapelle Berlin. After the war, producer Walter Legge brought the two artists together again for ambitious recording projects at Kingsway Hall in London, this time with the Philharmonia Orchestra. Now, for the first time, the entire Lucerne concert from 12 August 1954, is available to the public, restored and remastered from the original archival materials.