Géza Anda single-handedly helped Bartók’s Second Piano Concerto attain a truly international breakthrough. This CD offers his first public performance of the work in 1950. The recording allows a fascinating insight into the beginnings of a lifelong passion and shows why Anda was predestined to become the paramount representative of this concerto.

Even as a very young man, Anda had performed the Tchaikovsky, but in later years this most famous of all piano concertos only sporadically appeared on his programs. This recording from 1973 documents a blissful evening - sound, touch and phrasing always remain flexible and differentiated with all the desire of overflowing, life-affirming gestures.

A subtle, burnished tone of exquisite beauty and sublime serenity informs his interpretation of the Intermezzo in E flat major, Op.117, No.1 by Johannes Brahms, performed by Anda as an encore following the Tchaikovsky Concerto, opening up the very poetic essence of this late Brahms work.

This is the fifth and final instalment of Géza Anda's recordings with the SWR.