Artur Schnabel

Artur Schnabel defined for a whole generation how the central Austro-German classics of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert should sound on the piano. His deeply considered, intellectually probing, philosophical interpretations formed part of a lifelong quest to discover the inner workings of music he felt was better than it could ever be played. Born in Kunzendorf (now Lipnik, Poland) in 1882, from the start Schnabel preferred the poetic intimacy of Schubert’s then virtually unknown piano sonatas to the fizzing pyrotechnics of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. Schnabel embraced every piano medium, including chamber music—his regular playing partners included violinist Joseph Szigeti, composer/violist Paul Hindemith and cellist Pablo Casals—and accompanying contralto Therese Behr, whom he married in 1905. Schnabel fled Nazi Germany in 1933, completed the first complete recording of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas two years later (despite finding the studio uncongenial) and settled in North America before returning to Europe after the Second World War. Additionally, Schnabel was the gifted composer of three symphonies, five string quartets and a piano concerto. He died in Axenstein, Switzerland, in 1951, aged 69.