Claudio Arrau - Biography
Claudio Arrau famed Chilean Pianist was born in Chillan February 6th 1903 and died in Murzzuschlag Austria on June 19th 1991.Arrau was born into a socially prominent family. His mother who he was close to through the early stages of his career was a fine amateur pianist. When he was seven his musical abilities were advanced enough to have the Chilean government send him to Berlin where he was to study with the distinguished piano teacher Martin Krause who was a pupil of Liszt. By the time he was twelve he was giving recitals throughout Germany. He had a phenomenal technique and was an especially fine interpreter of Liszt. He was aligned to the intellectually progressive school surrounding composer pianist Busoni and knew and studied music of the Schonberg school. He made visits to South America and the U.S. but he chiefly concertized in Germany.
Arrau in 1937 married a Mezzo- Soprano Ruth Schneider who was Jewish and this made it impossible for him to live in Germany and he moved to the U.S.A. where he was to eventually became a citizen .At first he made recordings for both American Columbia and RCA. A well known and highly respected artist he had not yet reached the renown of the first tier of artists like Rubinstein and Horowitz. In his mid fifties Arrau remarkably transformed from someone who was primarily known as a virtuoso performer to a deeply reflective performer of the great German Classics. In the book “Conversations with Arrau” he attributes this reflective approach to his studies of psychology and philosophy. His professional headquarters know became London where he gave memorable cycles of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas and great readings of the last three Beethoven Concertos during Otto Klemperer’s legendary Beethoven series in 1957. Arrau during the late 1950’s made a number of recordings with EMI but in the 1960’s he moved his label affiliation to Philips and it is to his voluminous output of recordings with them that his posthumous reputation rests. One of his first projects there was to record the 32 Beethoven Piano Sonatas and the Five Piano Concertos with Bernard Haitink in Amsterdam. He then turned to a comprehensive series of the music of Liszt and above all to most of the Schumann Piano Music which is unsurpassed to this day. He was also a splendid interpreter of Brahms and his very broad readings with Haitink of the Two Piano Concertos are memorable. Arrau continued to record into his late eighties and added recordings of the Haydn, Mozart and Schubert Sonatas.
Arrau’s repertoire was probably larger than any other pianist. Besides all the aforementioned works he performed quite a bit of Bach, almost all of Chopin, Busoni and music of the Spanish School. Arrau consciously strived to reflect the profundity and introspection of the great German conductor Furtwangler who he revered. Some critics like the American specialist in piano music Harold Schoenberg found him to self conscious. But the consensus of informed opinion is that he is one of the great pianists of the 20TH Century.
