The last week of April 2023 marked the 70th anniversary of Géza Anda’s debut recording sessions for EMI’s Columbia label, some of the finest performances set down over the course of a three-decade career that was tragically shortened due to his early death of cancer.

Beginning on April 23, 1953, the young Hungarian pianist recorded the two works featured on his debut LP, Schumann’s Études symphoniques and the Brahms Variations on a Theme of Paganini. The former was set down at EMI’s Abbey Road Studio No.3 over the course of two days on April 23 & 24 and the latter on April 24, 25, and 27. In his magnificent EMI recordings, Anda used the wonderfully responsive Steinway 299 used by so many great artists in that studio (Lipatti, Cortot, Fischer, and Moiseiwitsch among them), showcasing to perfection his exquisite array of tonal colours, incredible dynamic gradations, magical pedalling, precise and varied articulation, and truly remarkable sense of rhythm.

I have played excerpts from these two recordings at university piano literature classes, and upon hearing each of these great performances several students said they were ready to throw in the towel because they believed they could never create such a stunningly beautiful sound. I told them to reconsider as they previously hadn’t known that this kind of playing was possible, and now they had something they could try to emulate.

The Hungarian pianist made four studio recordings of this Schumann opus over the course of his career: 1943, 1951, 1953, and 1963, and there are at least three other broadcast recordings in existence. The earlier two commercial accounts were very fine but not quite as cohesively delivered as this stunning 1953 version, and by the time he made his more famous later recordings for the DG label, he was a very different pianist than is heard in his earlier discs – far more cerebral, and rhythmically not quite as taut (nor is the sound quite as focused in those accounts). Anda’s playing in this April 23/24, 1953 account of the Etudes symphoniques is simply stellar, with his exquisite array of tonal colours, incredible dynamic gradations, magical pedalling, precise and varied articulation, and remarkable sense of rhythm are all captured marvellously by the recording engineers.

This performance of the Brahms Variations on a Theme of Paganini demonstrates his incredible refinement fused with bristling excitement. With a jewel-like crystalline sonority, deft articulation, rhythmic vitality, and stunningly refined dynamic and tonal shadings, Anda delivers a reading that is simultaneously thrilling and elegant.

Anda played both of these works in a superb 1955 Edinburgh recital that was recorded on acetates by the BBC and decades later issued on a BBC Legends CD. Those live readings demonstrate that even on stage in unedited performances he was capable of all the refinement of nuance and technical mastery that we hear in these EMI recordings, though the studio accounts are in vastly superior sound.

As stated, the pianist’s playing would go through quite a radical transformation over the coming decade and by the time he was signed to Deutsche Grammophon at the end of the 50s he already seemed to be different pianist. A fascinating comparison that includes the Schumann recording above can be found in this episode I produced of a program called “Varying Interpretations” – about halfway through the episode, I present four performances by Anda of one of the variations from the Etudes symphoniques from the 1943, 1951, 1953, and 1963 recordings mentioned above. The EMI account is the third of the four, and to my ears the best of the lot: the earlier ones sound as if he had not yet anchored his conception nor fully honed his technical mastery, which reach their apex in the 1953 reading, and then a decade later we hear a version for DG that, while a fine reading, is not quite as compelling.

Whichever versions of Anda one prefers, it is clear that in his EMI days, he was a truly masterful pianist and this debut album set down 70 years ago is a fantastic testament to his inspired artistry. It is to be hoped that Warner, which has taken over the EMI catalogue, will finally see fit to release a comprehensive box set of the pianist’s output for the label so he can more widely be heard at this time of his career.

For more about this artist in his earlier years, please investigate my centenary tribute to him here.