Claudio  Arrau: Piano Recitals 1954, 1960, 1963 | SWR Classic SWR19054CD

Claudio Arrau: Piano Recitals 1954, 1960, 1963

Label: SWR Classic

Cat No: SWR19054CD

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 5

Genre: Instrumental

Release Date: 12th January 2018

Contents

About

These recitals from 1954, 1960 and 1963 are being released for the first time. Claudio Arrau was one of the most prominent pianists of the 20th century. His career lasted for almost 80 years.

Volume 1 of the complete SWR recordings of Claudio Arrau contains pieces that were never recorded or performed by Claudio Arrau at any other time.

Beethoven’s Appassionata has very rarely been played in such a stirring, pressing and urgent way as on the evening on 27 March 1954. Arrau launches into the work with abandon; passion here means not only speed in the extreme sections prescribed by Beethoven, but also a stirring experience in which the pianist does not shy away from the risk of making his performance a spirited, subversive experience. Claudio Arrau opened the evening with Mozart’s playful, buoyant Rondo in D major (K485), a choice that would possibly surprise fans of Arrau’s later years.

When Claudio Arrau played works by Debussy and Ravel in Ludwigsburg on 27 March 1954, it was not a popular choice for the German cultural region. French repertoire was of secondary importance to German pianists. Debussy’s Pour le piano, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau or his pianistically ingenious Alborada del gracioso fantasy enabled Arrau to demonstrate his admirable ability to apply a wide variety of expression, enabling historical, geographical and musical distinctiveness. The performer played three encores, including a recklessly brisk Chopin Etude and Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso, op.14, which never again turned up in his repertoire, as far as I can tell.

With his extensive Chopin programme in Ludwigsburg Palace on 12 March 1960, Claudio Arrau showcased one of the composers who constituted a pillar of musical communication for his life as a pianist. Two ballades, a scherzo, the Sonata in B minor, op.58, and the 24 Preludes, op.28, cover a wide range of Chopin’s aesthetics. Arrau stretched deeper than Rubinstein into the unusual qualities of the Preludes, more apprehensive, more sorrowful in the obscure dimensions of the Ballades than Adam Harasiewicz. Much of what we hear in the musical twilight zones already hints at his Brahms recordings.

In these three concerts in Ludwigsburg and Schwetzingen, we are witness to a performer who gave concerts for around eighty years, with the exception of a brief interruption in the mid-1920s. His is a unique story of musical honesty and fortitude, which came to an end on 9 June 1991 in Mürzzuschlag, Austria – a fateful place, since Claudio Arrau was supposed to open with a concert at the Johannes Brahms Museum...

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