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Title: Inspired and fearless
Review: Gieseking may be inconsistent at times in these performances, but the sections of sustained inspiration rendered in light, sometimes extraordinarily fleet playing make owning these CDs mandatory. The last movement of the Les Adieux sonata has an unsurpassed high-spirited drive at a tempo that few could manage and at which fewer still could make convincing music (perhaps Josef Hofmann?). The descending scales on the first page of Op. 90, first movement...OK, lots of people play brilliant scales, but the evenness of Gieseking is astounding. The last half of the second movement of Op. 111 finds Gieseking playing in a manner in which his whole mechanism is perfectly balanced, producing line and sound of extraordinary purity.
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