William Kapell - Recordings

Recordings

In 1944, Kapell signed an exclusive recording contract with RCA Victor. Many of his recordings were originally issued as 78RPM records. Some were issued on LP, but by 1960, all of Kapell's commercial recordings were out of print. RCA reissued Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 on LP in the early 1970s. For decades, bootlegged copies of the commercial recordings and pirate recordings of "live" performances circulated among collectors.

In the 1980s, RCA released two compact discs of Kapell's recordings, including the Khatchaturian and Prokofiev Third Piano Concertos, and an all-Chopin disc.

A nine CD survey released by RCA in 1998 contains Kapell's complete authorized recordings, including renditions of Chopin's mazurkas and sonatas as well as concertos by Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Khatchaturian. It also has many lesser-known items, some of them first releases, including Shostakovich preludes, Scarlatti sonatas, and the Copland Piano Sonata. The set sold remarkably well throughout the world and brought Kapell's work to a new audience.

VAI 1027 contains broadcast recordings of the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Khatchaturian Piano Concerto. Arbiter 108 features part of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Shostakovich Concerto No. 1, and it includes Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, which also appears in the RCA set, as well as on VAI 1048, the last from an Australian recital of July 21, 1953.

In 2004, a number of recordings made during William Kapell's last Australian tour were returned to his family. These were released on the RCA Red Seal label in 2008 as Kapell Rediscovered. They contain several previously unknown performances of God Save the Queen, Debussy's Suite Bergamasque, Chopin's Barcarolle, Op. 60 and Scherzo in B minor, Op. 20, and Prokofiev's Sonata No. 7 Op 83.