Once legendary country music producer Owen Bradley recalled singer Patsy Cline as “my lost angel,” and in the world of classical piano music a similar description might well fit William Kapell, whose meteoric career ended in a tragic and similar fashion. A youthful, powerful, and uncompromisingly dynamic pianist with dashing good looks and a taste for wide-ranging literature, Kapell was a blazing ball of fire at the keyboard whose star was in the ascendant when the plane he was traveling in crashed into a mountain just south of San Francisco; he was 31. For someone who died so young, Kapell made an impressive number of recordings, issued in a more or less definitive package by RCA Red Seal, The William Kapell Edition, in 1998. Two additional hours of Kapell’s “missing time” have been recovered in the meantime, and released as Kapell Rediscovered: The Australian Broadcasts, introduced with some degree of fanfare a week ago.

The attention this release has been accorded thus far is well deserved, though owing to its irrevocably rough sound quality –- the source discs were made by a home radio receiver — Kapell Rediscovered seems more directed at those who know his work well already, rather than to the potential audience the hype is more likely to reach. For listeners who merely want to get a sense of what Kapell’s volcanic playing was like, we have selected a few choice bits in terms of samples and suggestions. The finiteness of Kapell’s recorded output invites the kind of comprehensive packaging that gives a listener “everything” and coalesces with the marketing trend of floating large packages of classical material for a discount; at the per-disc rate, the nine discs in the William Kapell Edition will only set one back by about half the cost of nine full-price discs. And yet, there is nothing wrong with enjoying Kapell in smaller measure; the intensity and depth of his pianism may well be better grasped listening a disc, or even a piece at a time. Kapell’s artistry is something that well transcends both the technology of his time and the typical conventions then commonly observed by Kapell’s colleagues in the few recordings he made with other musicians. No matter how one decides to take on William Kapell, he was undoubtedly an original, and his time -– missing or not –- is time well spent.

 
Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (recorded 1951)
Khachaturian: Piano Concerto (recorded 1946)
Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor - Scherzo (recorded 1951)
Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 7 (from “Kapell Rediscovered,” recorded in Australia, 1953)