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Arrau at the Ambassador · The Piano Maven with Jed Distler

• 0:08
  This is Jed Disler and welcome to the Piano Maven,
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  your friendly podcast guide to piano recordings.
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  And we are inching our way toward the end of
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  the year and our second season. And this has
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  been a long season and we've had a lot of episodes,
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  my goodness. I want to talk about a box set that
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  came out earlier this year that I have reviewed,
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  although the review hasn't been published as
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  I'm reading this script here. You see, I don't
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  speak off the top of my head. I can't speak one
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  spontaneous word to save my life. But this is
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  a box set. called Claudio Arrau, the Ambassador
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  Auditorium Recitals, 1977, 1981, and 1986. And
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  it's on the first -hand label. They did a box
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  set the year before consisting of recitals by
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  Shura Cherkosky from the Ambassador Auditorium.
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  And this box is devoted to Claudio Arrau. And
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  there are some marvelous performances here. The
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  highly rhetorical interpretations that generally
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  characterized Claudio Arrau's later years tended
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  to catch fire more in public than in the contemporaneous
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  studio recordings he did for Phillips. And I
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  think that these three... Previously unpublished
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  recitals in this box set largely attest to what
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  I just said. There's a concert from February
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  13th, 1977, and Arau is 74 at the time of this
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  concert, and he's pretty much on top form. It
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  begins with Beethoven's Sonata No. 30, Op. 109,
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  and it's a wonderful performance. It abounds
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  with spontaneous inflections of phrase and very
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  dramatic subito dynamics. This was something
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  that was really big. on Arau's Beethovenian agenda.
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  And also on this concert is the Liszt B Minor
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  Sonata and the Brahms F Minor Sonata. And I heard
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  him play both of these at his 75th birthday recital
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  at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in February
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  1978. And I think that these Los Angeles performances
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  are Every bit is fervent and passionate and full
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  of the kind of note -to -note continuity of his
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  best performances, and they are very much on
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  the level of his early 1970 studio recordings.
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  1970s, I mean, of the Liszt B minor and the Brahms
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  F minor. Maybe the Brahms came in the late 60s.
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  I can't remember. I don't have an Arrau discography
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  in front of me. But I think these are wonderful
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  performances. And I think with an audience present,
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  there's a little extra adrenaline that you can
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  really gleam from these performances. In 1981,
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  Arau took on a rather hefty and ambitious program
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  for his recital season, and I think sometimes
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  the choices in repertoire were pushing his energy
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  and concentration to their limits. For example,
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  this recital that's included in this box from
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  February 10th, 1981, gets off to a rather heavy
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  -handed start in Beethoven's Sonata No. 13 in
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  E -flat, Op. 27 No. 1, and there's a little memory
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  lapse at the scherzo's outset that I should mention.
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  But Rao really wakes up in time. Rather, that's
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  not nice to say. He warms up in time, let's put
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  it that way, for Schumann's symphonic etudes.
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  And he plays all of the posthumous variations,
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  and he observes all of the repeats. I think in
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  this performance that his playing is far more
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  fluent and emotionally involved compared to his
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  earlier Philips Studio recording, which I always...
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  found kind of static and rather stop -and -go.
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  He plays also on this recital, Arau does, the
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  Debussy Etampes, and they really have a lot of
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  breadth to them and a sense of atmosphere that
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  I think is superior to his relatively careful
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  Philips Studio recording of the Etampes. The
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  live Chopin Fantasy in F minor in this concert,
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  I think, completely mirrors the urgency of the
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  Phillips studio recording he made just a few
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  years earlier. But I think in concert it lives
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  more dangerously. There's also the Liszt Dante
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  Sonata, which is the closing work to this concert.
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  I think that over time... Arau's performance
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  would cohere and coalesce to more unified effect.
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  It certainly did so when he brought it to the
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  studio in April of 1982. And I do remember hearing
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  Arau play the Dante Sonata around, I think it
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  was early 1982 at Carnegie Hall, which really,
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  really impressed me. The final concert in this
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  box comes from February 18th, 1986. And a slight
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  decline had crept into Arau's technique by this
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  time. But in this all -Beethoven recital, his
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  gorgeous full -bodied sonority and powers of
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  projection are pretty much intact. The slow movements
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  of the four sonatas that encompass this program
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  I think Kepcher aroused long -lined legato and
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  his wonderful sense of transition at their best.
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  And on this program, he plays the Op. 10 No.
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  3 in D major, and then the Waldstein, which he
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  was playing all the time in his last years, the
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  Appassionata, and also the Lesa Dio Sonata. But
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  I do have to say that Claudio Arrau's 1950s EMI
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  and 1960s Phillips studio recordings of all of
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  these works, I think, preserve his conceptions
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  really at full technical and interpretive capacity.
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  But there are live performances of these pieces
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  throughout. aroused career where you can always
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  find more spontaneity and more inflection. Anyway,
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  these archival recordings in the first -hand
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  box set never were intended for commercial release,
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  but they do benefit from very careful remastering,
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  and they all sound much more than acceptable.
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  So if you are a Claudio Arau enthusiast, and
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  if you're a piano maven, you certainly should
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  be an Arau enthusiast. I always have been. I
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  think you will find a lot to savor in these five
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  discs. This is Jed Disler, and you've been listening
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  to The Piano Maven, your friendly podcast guide
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  to piano recordings, and I look forward to being
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  with you for our next episode.