[Kreisler jr]

There, I don't generally like to argue with other people's taste but when someone trashes something that has given me so many hundreds of hours of pleasure I can't restrain myself. As usual, though, it all comes down to taste and it is great that we all differ. But doesn't that mean that we should refrain from making decisive judgments for others to follow? They should know that some names crop up again and again as worthy and some of us like some of them but not others.

First of all, I have not "trashed" anything. (To the contrary, I find what I have heard of Fischer's quite good, just not as great as many people claim.)
Second, the facts of distribution and reception are indisputable. There was a LONG time before the internet, don't mistake what you find in the last 20 years of internet for gospel or even a representative sample of classical music lover's opinions because it obviously is not.
Annie Fischer's hungaroton cycle (recorded piecemeal over time in the late 1970s? and never fully approved by the pianist as long as she was alive, publication seems 1996) is not obscure but not remotely comparable to Schnabel's that has been in the catalogue for 80 years or the others that have been around 45-60 years been recommended by dozens of Penguins or other language record guides. I don't even like Kempff, Backhaus, Brendel, Arrau all that much. But all of them had been standard recommendation for decades when all that was available from Annie Fischer were about 7 sonatas in mediocre sound from the late 1950s on EMI. It's almost like claiming Ferencsik's Beethoven or Rozhdestvensky's Sibelius were as well known and distributed as Toscanini or Karajan... "Fischer" usually meant Edwin in the context of Beethoven.
And this was the question of the thread, no personal favorites.

Annie Fischer ranks certainly higher for me here than Kempff (wimpy) or Backhaus (dry as dust), but not sufficiently high for me to get 6 or 7 more full price discs. I have hungaroton Vols. 1+3 as well as the 7 Sonatas on EMI; as op.111 is in both, these are 14 different works. They are interesting and often quite good but AFAIR would rarely be among my first choices, rather interesting alternatives. E.g her EMI recording of op.31/3 is grim and humourless, a very different perspective, but not one I would give as a first recommendation.

 

[Enthusiast]

Second, the facts of distribution and reception are indisputable. There was a LONG time before the internet, don't mistake what you find in the last 20 years of internet for gospel or even a representative sample of classical music lover's opinions because it obviously is not.
Annie Fischer's hungaroton cycle (recorded piecemeal over time in the late 1970s? and never fully approved by the pianist as long as she was alive, publication seems 1996)

As I am sure you know, I also have been around and listening to music for a long time and certainly before the internet was there to help. You don't need to lecture me on the history of musical criticism (even if only measured by the two big publications - publications that were focused on recordings, something that she was in general not interested in) and of the internet as the source of the last word on the subject.

Annie Fischer's set was recorded piecemeal but the intention was to record all the sonatas. And if you take away from the word "piecemeal" an idea of her endeavour being somewhat relaxed or accidental, you could not be more wrong. She revisited the studio and re-recorded some parts many times and slowly over time assembled her set. She might have gone on further but the set we have had been perfected and polished until it was alive. Strange, isn't it, that he method for achieving this would have led most pianists to have killed the works? As a musician she avoided the studio and was known only for her live performances, not for recordings. I believe the Beethoven set was the only music she consented to record in the studio and her method for doing so was extraordinary. It is said she was trying to replicate what she had learned from decades of playing (only) to audiences.

For the rest of what you say, the OP calls for recommendations not for "established recommendations" or recommendations established over decades by critics. That that has been your aim here explains where you are coming from in what you posted but wasn't clear to me at least until now. Meanwhile, I am truly sorry that you don't actually like Kempff's or the Backhaus sets and I guess our biggest difference is that you have an idea of how the music should and should not sound while I enjoy a variety of ways and celebrate when a pianist makes one of these really work. Thinking of Kempff's recording as "wimpy" shocks me. Inward (not extravert), thoughtful, personal and rapt might work but "wimpy": really?