Claudio Arrau

A pianist whose career spanned most of the 20th century, Claudio Arrau is acclaimed as a virtuoso who was also a deep musical thinker. With an ideal blend of instrumental élan and musical insight, he put his pianistic powers and penetrating mind fully at the service of the music in hand. His repertoire was vast, from Bach to Tchaikovsky, with a focus on the central pillars of Romanticism. Born in Chillán, Chile, in 1903, he was sent aged eight on a government scholarship to study in Berlin with Martin Krause, who had himself been a pupil of Liszt. For an idea of the young Arrau’s firebrand virtuosity, listen to his 1928 recording of Balakirev’s Islamey (1869). As he got older, his playing became fuller, with a richly upholstered sound and often with broad tempos. In the last decades of his life, Arrau recorded large swathes of repertoire for Philips, including Beethoven (the tension and detail of his visionary late sonatas are striking), Chopin, Schumann’s great piano cycles, early Brahms and late Schubert. But perhaps the most vital treasure of his legacy is his series of Liszt recordings from the 1970s and 1980s, where without underplaying its virtuosity, Arrau brings a sincere nobility that is often sacrificed in this music. Arrau’s playing isn’t always easy listening—he was uncompromising in his search for musical truth—but it brings special and lasting rewards. He died in 1991.