The three Bach Chorale-Preludes are Kempff’s own transcriptions of Bach’s organ originals and tie his pianistic career to his love of the organ, which he continued to play all his life. The third of them, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” became widely known through an earlier version for solo piano by Myra Hess.

Mozart’s Fantasia in C minor dates from 1785. He composed several other works with that name, but this is the most musically self-contained. Its strongly contrasted material in so short a span of time is unique in Mozart’s works.

The Beethoven Sonata Op. 26 is from Kempff’s stereo integral recording. He made three other earlier versions for DG. Hearing all of them is an affirmation of his approach. Besides their essential nobility, the hallmarks of his Beethoven recordings were a varied tonal palette, transparent textures and phrasing informed by a beautiful legato. Those qualities made Kempff esteemed (after Artur Schnabel’s death) as perhaps the twentieth century’s outstanding Beethoven interpreter. The Pathétique recording is his second, made in 1936.

Kempff came to record Schubert’s piano works relatively late. The three Piano Pieces were composed in May, 1828, in between the better known Fantasy in F minor for piano four hands and the last three solo sonatas, and are characteristic of his late piano style. They remained unpublished until 1868.

Kempff always had the music of Chopin in his repertoire, one of the few non-German composers he always performed. The Liszt legends, like the Chopin works, were recorded by Decca in the fifties, during a hiatus in Kempff’s affiliation with DG.

Schumann and Brahms are always special in Kempff’s hands. His account of the former’s “Scenes from Childhood” is a very sophisticated interpretation but never overly so. Brahms’s youthful Scherzo shows off Kempff’s use of color and articulation, as the composer’s last set of piano pieces, dating from 1893, does both tonal balance and characterization in the dreamy, terse and serene moods, respectively, of the three Intermezzos, then the extroverted and vital Rhapsody that concludes the set. Kempff performed the latter work frequently on his 1964-65 U. S. tour, and those who heard him play it will never forget it.