Walter Klien

Walter Klien ( born November 27, 1928 in Graz, Austria, † 10 February 1991) was an Austrian pianist.

Klien was from Graz. His mother was the painter and sculptor Erika Giovanna Klien ( 1900-1957 ). She emigrated in 1929 to the United States and had from that time to the family only epistolary contact. Klien studied with Josef Dichler at the Vienna Academy of Music and with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, piano and composition with Paul Hindemith. He was winner of the Busoni Piano Competition in Bolzano and the Marguerite Long Competition in Paris. He also won the Bösendorfer Prize in 1953 in Vienna. His debut in the U.S. took place in 1969.

Shortly before his death in 1991 he was awarded the 1987 Joseph Marx Music Prize and in 1989 with the Golden Medal of Honour of the Federal capital Vienna.

Recordings

His discography includes the complete piano works of Mozart and the majority of the solo piano works of Brahms, as well as all piano sonatas by Schubert. The violin sonatas of Mozart, he accompanied Arthur Grumiaux. This shot was particularly observed, Grumiaux was accompanied in the previous mono recording of the legendary Clara Haskil, for Walter Klien proved as an equal substitute. With Alfred Brendel he took on four-hand works by Mozart and Brahms. Besides that, there song recordings in which he accompanied Julius Patzak and Hans Hotter, as well as recordings for piano duet, or for two pianos, which he recorded with his wife Beatriz Klien. His interpretations were admired for their crystalline purity and detail. In particular, these virtues come to meet his interpretations of Mozart and Schubert 's piano music. Particularly clear these qualities but also in his much-lauded recording of Brahms's piano works in which he replaced the then prevalent proverbial " Brahms Fog " by a flexible and transparent reading. Although he was not the first pianist who trod this path before him are especially Wilhelm Backhaus and Walter Gieseking to mention, he worked through these recordings more than others pianists of his time stylistically.