00:00 - I. Allegro
20:44 - II. Adagio un poco mosso
28:54 - III. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

Recorded: 1957 8 November. Live from the Royal Festival Hall, London.
Otto Klemperer conducting The Philharmonia Orchestra
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Claudio Arrau Leon (1903 – 1991)

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Introduced in 1913 by Chilean pianist Rosita Renard, who was already making a promising career in Europe, Claudio Arrau became a pupil under the legendary Maestro Martin Krause (Lipsia 1853-Berlin 1918), himself a former pupil of Franz Liszt, at the renowned Julius Stern Conservatory of Berlin.

After listening to the child playing, Maestro Krause is reported to have said:
"This boy shall be my masterwork!"

[ Beethoven — Czerny — Liszt — Krause — Arrau ]

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BBC recording / EMI -Testament / SBT2-1351 / England / MONO

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Beethoven Piano Concertos Nos 3 - 5; Piano sonatas Nos 24 & 31
A spirited Arrau and dashing Klemperer results in a fine partnership
Author: Richard Osborne

In the autumn of 1957, Walter Legge staged a Beethoven festival in honour of Otto Klemperer at the Royal Festival Hall. All nine symphonies were performed and the five piano concertos with Claudio Arrau as soloist. At the same time, Klemperer completed his recording of the nine which had begun so auspiciously in the autumn of 1955 with celebrated accounts of the Eroica, Fifth and Seventh symphonies. The concerto performances won golden opinions but, though they were broadcast, they were not taken into the studio by EMI. (Arrau did record the concertos, but with Alceo Galliera.)

That Klemperer was a wonderful conductor of these works was made clear 10 years later when he recorded all five concertos with the young Daniel Barenboim for EMI, a set which still excites and satisfies in equal measure. As an accompanist, Klemperer was firm but fair. Each work is unerringly shaped; each is presented with a certain dash and relish. ‘Klemperer? Dash?’ you might ask. Absolutely. From the opening movement of the C minor Concerto, which he and Arrau treat as a true allegro con brio (crotchet=140 is close to Czerny’s crotchet=144), to a cracking account of the finale of the E flat Concerto, these are spirited performances as well as musically serious ones.

Arrau, who loathed Toscanini-style logicians, had not greatly enjoyed Klemperer’s Beethoven conducting in pre-war Berlin. However, he had no such problem with Klemperer’s latter-day Beethoven which seemed vivid, robust, marinated by time. It made for a distinguished combination. The Third Concerto, in some ways the most elusive of the five, is shaped as well as it is possible to imagine it being shaped, and the Emperor, a few finger-slips notwithstanding, is very fine. I wondered in advance about the Fourth Concerto (Furtwängler was Arrau’s ideal here, later Eugen Jochum and Sir Colin Davis) but it is a measure of the artists’ respect for one another that, even here, they rub along pretty well.

There are a couple of flies in the ointment. First, the coughers who do their best to wreck the performance of the Third Concerto, beginning at Arrau’s magical dip of tone as the drum ushers in the first movement coda and going right through the slow movement. Secondly, the recording of the piano itself which is marginally too distant and so, in a way, oddly imprecise, making these performances unrepresentative of Arrau the pianist in a way that his studio recordings of the concertos under Galliera, Haitink and Davis never were.

Why the first two concertos are not included is left unexplained. As for the two sonatas – studio recordings which are too closely recorded! – they are marvellous. ‘This seems to me very great playing,’ wrote Roger Fiske of Sonata No 31 in February 1959. ‘Among the happiest of fill-ups on disc,’ said Malcolm Macdonald of Arrau’s account of the charming Sonata No 24, which appeared two months later alongside a highly regarded account of the First Concerto.


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Luca
5.0 out of 5 stars Two Legends "Live" Together!
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2012

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