Dame Myra Hess & Ernest Ansermet: Beethoven Piano Concerto No.3 live in 1958

A March 23, 1958 concert broadcast performance of Dame Myra Hess playing Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.3 in C Minor with Ernest Ansermet conducting the New York Philharmonic. This Sunday afternoon radio broadcast performance has, as far as I know, never been released - perhaps due to a gap in the recording partway through the last movement and some radio interference at various parts of the source material. Nevertheless, this recording is very much worth hearing: Hess famously disliked the recording process and in general extant live performances show her music-making at its freest and most inspired, often capturing her in works outside her commercial discography’s repertoire. Although this reading is from the last few years of Hess’s career, she was still in very fine form. As always, she plays with a wonderful balance of strength and sensitivity, with dynamic contrasts idiomatic to Beethoven’s music evident throughout but particularly well accomplished in the exquisitely