Icac 克劳迪奥·阿劳 Claudio Arrau

Although Claudio Arrau had impressive credentials as a Liszt player - his only teacher was Martin Krause, who was a student of Liszt - and he performed many of the composer's works early in his career, he neither exploited this association, nor became known as a Liszt specialist. Perhaps this was because Krause warned him not to become a specialist in the music of any one composer, urging him instead to embrace all music. Consequently, the younger Arrau's repertoire was very large; however, as he grew older he concentrated on fewer composers, moving as it were from the universal to the particular applying almost prophetic insight into certain scores, especially those of Beethoven and Liszt.

These recordings reflect how Arrau’s textually scrupulous yet highly personal mastery of many styles had matured and ripened, while retaining the fire and ardency of his youth. Arrau’s Mozart, Weber and Chopin probe beyond the music’s surface charm, as do the luminous and full-bodied Spanish and French Impressionist selections. Cumulative momentum and thoughtful detail characterize Arrau’s Beethoven and Schumann while the extraordinary technical finish of his Liszt transcends mere virtuosity and bravura.

Claudio Arrau - Chopin (1991) {6CD Box Set Philips Classics 432 303-2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 1.32 Gb | MP3 @320 -> 884 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 494 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1991 Philips Classics | 432 303-2
Classical / Romantic / Piano

"Arrau's Chopin – now available in a six-CD box (Philips 432 303-2) as part of Philips's Arrau Edition – is as far from moonstruck "sentimentality" as any Chopin ever was. But no performance of the Preludes is more sentimental, in Schiller's sense, than the version Arrau recorded for Philips in 1973. Its premise – that the cycle is a grand tragedy, the darkest thing Chopin wrote – is unmistakable. Even the prefatory C-major Prelude heaves with orgasmic rubatos – more weight, it seems, than the music can possibly bear. And yet, as Arrau packs each small berth with a world of feeling, the weight grips and holds. At times, the sheer density of emotion can seem suffocatingly intense. The Prelude No. 22, a Stygian descent, is surely Hades; the plunging scales of No. 24 rip the thread of life."

The security of Arrau's technique, the continuing fullness of tone and the fine gradations of touch, is nothing less than astonishing. So too is the mature accommodation he has come to with Beethoven's endlessly problematic C minor Concerto. Arrau's earliest recording of the concerto, with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1947, may have been more brilliant (though, from the orchestra's point of view, more slapdash) but this long-pondered, lovingly evolved reading takes us much closer to the idealizing centre of Beethoven's visionary world; and does so, incidentally, in a way that could not be approached in 1000 years by the authenticity merchants with their pygmy instruments and tedious lists of contemporary metronome markings.

Claudio Arrau recorded these concertos twice for Philips, the present performances in 1963, and then again in 1980 with Colin Davis and the Boston Symphony. There's very little to choose between them. Tempos are almost identical, and contrary to what one might expect, the slow movement of the Schumann concerto is actually a bit faster in the later version. Arrau's way with the music is wholly characteristic of the man: serious, even reverential (at the beginning of the Schumann), and played with drop-dead gorgeous tone. The result enhances the stature of both works, but the Grieg in particular. The climax of the finale has an epic grandeur without a hint of bombast that you simply won't find in any other performance. Dohnányi's accompaniments are also distinguished: he lets Arrau lead but isn't afraid to permit the orchestra to assert itself where necessary; and of course the playing of the Concertgebouw is top-notch. If you haven't heard Arrau in this music, it really doesn't matter which of his recordings you wind up with, but do try to get at least one of them.