Beethoven was a composer with whose music Arrau was particularly associated, and he could trace his illustrious musical ancestry back via his teacher Martin Krause, himself a pupil of Liszt, and Czerny to Beethoven himself. Arrau recorded the Diabelli Variations for American Decca in 1952, and he made this second recording in 1985, during the period of his projected digital recording of Beethoven s piano sonatas. This later performance allows us to hear Arrau s incomparably full and rich sound to glorious effect, with a transparency that permits every strand in the texture to be heard, displaying Arrau s polyphonic gift but without sacrificing the beauty of sonority which was such a feature of his playing. Some of the tempi may appear slower than before, the rubati grander, but actually the overall durations of the two performances are remarkably similar.In Arrau s hands these variations cover almost every available mood and style, their characters ranging from serious or profound (Nos.14 and 20) to the scintillating or humorous (Nos.10 and 22), culminating in the huge climax of the knotty fugue (No.32) and Beethoven s masterstroke the ethereal final minuet, which here seems to hark back to the transfigured ending of Beethoven s last piano sonata.Neville Cardus once called Arrau s performances of Chopin Chopin plus, a reflection of the pianist s unconventional approach to that composer s music. Indeed, some of Arrau s Chopin recordings violate conventional understanding of the composer. What distinguishes Arrau s approach is his scrupulous adherence to the letter of the score and the way he positively eschews technical display, preferring to emphasise the strenuous heroism of the music and imbuing it with the breadth and deep seriousness of purpose he brought to everything he played. Arrau loathed the way some pianists used Chopin s music as a vehicle for technical display, and for what he called personal elegance. There is of course elegance in Chopin s music, and in the most marvellous sense of the word. But it s only one element. The fact that he was sick and he didn t have very much physical strength doesn t mean that others should imitate that. His music is much bigger.In Arrau s hands the Chopin waltzes receive the most detailed and exhaustive treatment, full of richness and delicacy as well as drama, charm and an underlying sense of melancholy. These are performances that command concentrated listening, otherwise the scope, grandeur and detailing of Arrau s interpretations are likely to pass unnoticed.There have surely been no grander, nobler performances of Liszt s two concertos than these, which Arrau made in 1979 with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra. Davis recalled that Arrau managed to make the music grow logically from one thing to another, so that one feels the unity that is built into the concertos in a most unusual and original way. The textures too are extraordinary when they re played with the kind of Mozartian clarity which Arrau brings to that music. This is enhanced by the fine recording in which the piano and orchestra are integrated in a realistic perspective, allowing the complex textual detail to be heard to great effect. Arrau studied with Liszt s pupil Martin Krause and throughout his career his devotion to Liszt was extraordinary, his performances elevating the music to a stature achieved by few others. Divination was one of Arrau s favourite words and his playing of Liszt surely deserves the adjective divinatory, realising the extreme sensuousness, nobility, tragedy even, beyond the frequent cascades of notes. Arrau s Liszt is remarkable for its depth and spaciousness and what his pupil Garrick Ohlsson called His extreme, unabashed, unembarrassed passion.
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