This year is the centenary of Kempff's birth. He was born on November 25th, 1895. It is right that he should be singled out for some kind of place in DG's new series The Originals. But I hope there will be more. Nothing less than the reissue of his entire recorded output is adequate as tribute to the memory of this singular genius.

Of all Beethoven pianists, he is the one I most readily turn to, foibles and all. About his 1961 recording of the Emperor Concerto there can be few doubts. "The clearest recommendation for the Emperor I imagine I shall ever make, " wrote EG at the time. "When music reigns, " say the words in the Choral Fantasy, "night and storm turn to light. " That is the miracle which Beethoven, and Kempff, effect here.

Kempff was never a heavyweight among Beethoven pianists. What he had was intellect and imagination in perfect balance, a fabulous touch, great rhythmic elan, and a kind of improvisatory zeal that—translated into other terms—can best be described as a true and abiding sense of wonder. I met him only once, but I remember him saying how he always got a special thrill of excitement when the red light came on in the recording studio. And it shows! How different to so many—often very successful—recording artists who are terrified by its admonitory glow.

I felt this most acutely whilst listening again to his performance of the Fourth Piano Concerto. I was always less than happy with his decision to use his own cadenzas in this work. They still strike me as being vapid alongside Beethoven's own burning improvisations, for all that they are an earnest of Kempff's own improvisatory instinct. But the performance as a whole is such a joy, so light-filled, that even that qualification tends to fade into insignificance.

And how beautifully Leitner and the Berlin Philharmonic accompany Kempff. This was the new young Berlin Philharmonic of the early 1960s, poet-musicians to a man, trained to listen and respond and then, in performance, take wing into precisely those areas of mind and imagination that were Kempff's own natural habitat.