Claudio Arrau

The Chilean pianist Arrau, born on February 6, 1903, in Chillán, gained recognition at the age of five with a recital in Santiago – a concert that helped establish his reputation as a child prodigy. After studying with Paoli for two years, the Chilean government sent him with financial support to the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, where he had already performed at the age of eleven. His only teacher there was Martin Krause, then the last living pupil of Liszt and of crucial importance to Arrau's musical style. During his 5-year studies, Claudio Arrau already received several awards, such as the Ibach Prize and the Gustav Holländer Medal. Early tours took him through Germany and Scandinavia, and in 1918, once again throughout Europe. In 1919 and 1920, he won the Liszt Prize twice, which had not been awarded for forty-five years prior. At seventeen, he was already performing with internationally renowned orchestras and conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler and Arthur Nikisch. In 1921, he gave highly successful concerts in Argentina and Chile as part of a South American tour. In 1923, he undertook an American tour. From 1924, Claudio Arrau himself became a professor at the Stern Conservatory, where he remained until 1940. A milestone in his career was achieved in 1927 in Geneva with the first prize at the Grand Prix International des Pianistes, whose jury included such distinguished artistic personalities as Arthur Rubinstein and Alfred Cortot. A core element of his artistic work is a series of recitals in which he explores the complete piano works of great composers. For example, in 1935 in Berlin, he interpreted Johann Sebastian Bach's piano works over twelve evenings. However, he later turned away from Bach, as he considered the result on a modern concert grand piano to be inadequate. A year later, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's piano works were the focus of his interest, before he dedicated a complete interpretation to Franz Schubert's piano works in 1937. In 1940, Claudio Arrau left Europe to establish an institute for piano playing in Santiago. However, just one year later, he moved with his wife, the singer Ruth Schneider, and their two children to New York. One of the highlights of his intensive concert activity, with over one hundred performances per year, was a series of complete performances of Beethoven's piano sonatas in London and New York, broadcast even by the BBC in 1952. The focus of his global tours was on Romantic compositions. In 1967, he established the Claudio Arrau Foundation to support young musicians. From 1973, he re-edited Beethoven's piano sonatas for the Peters music publisher. The Berlin Philharmonic honored the fifty-year collaboration anniversary in 1978 with the Hans von Bülow Medal. Arrau died at the age of eighty-eight on June 9, 1991, in Mürzzuschlag, Austria. At EMI Classics, among Claudio Arrau's artistic legacy, in addition to the reference recordings of the Brahms piano concertos with Carlo Maria Giulini, etc., in the Références series, the recording of the Études Op. 10 and Op. 25 by Frédéric Chopin has been released. Claudio Arrau is also featured in the DVD-Video series Classic Archive – dedicated to the legends of classical music in rare visual documents (including those from the BBC).