# Claudio Arrau



## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Claudio Arrau was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century and my personal favourite pianist. 
My favourite recordings by him:
Schumann piano concerto: my favourite interpretation of this great work.
Grieg piano concerto
Beethoven and Brahms piano concertos
Tchaikovsky piano concertos
Beethoven piano sonatas
Weber konzertsück 
Chopin etudes
Chopin piano sonata 3
Schumann carnaval 
What do you think of him and what are your favourite recordings by him??


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## tovaris (Aug 28, 2012)

One of my favourite pianist as well. I love the complete Beethoven sonatas played by him. Sublime.


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## Schubussy (Nov 2, 2012)

Also one of my favourites. His version of Debussy's Suite Bergamasque is amazing.


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Burroughs said:


> Schumann piano concerto: my favourite interpretation of this great work.
> Grieg piano concerto


I had a vinyl LP of these two works (do they ever not appear together?) that may have been recorded in the 1960s and I agree. I wore the grooves out. It was the absolute best. I have been looking for a re-release ever since. The album had a really awful cover - sort of an unhealthy ochre sepia green with the composer portraits side by side. It may have been on Columbia but it was too long ago for me to recall. Does anyone know how often he recorded the works?


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Weston said:


> I had a vinyl LP of these two works (do they ever not appear together?) that may have been recorded in the 1960s and I agree. I wore the grooves out. It was the absolute best. I have been looking for a re-release ever since. The album had a really awful cover - sort of an unhealthy ochre sepia green with the composer portraits side by side. It may have been on Columbia but it was too long ago for me to recall. Does anyone know how often he recorded the works?


I recently bought this recording and have also been constantly playing it. He plays it so passionately and the emotion he plays it with is heat-wrenching. Have you heard any other recordings of him playing?

There is an excellent album including all Beethoven's piano concertos, Grieg, Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Brahms piano concertos. Plus Webers' Konzertstuck, Schumann's carnival, some Chopin etudes, fantaisie and Allegro de concert, some Debussy, various Beethoven piano sonatas and other pieces of Schubert etc.

It is called Claudio Arrau virtuoso piano collection, you can get it on Amazon for £8.99 however it is not on a CD it is Mp3 files. 
If you want it on CD then the best option is to buy the more expensive Icon - Claudio Arrau box-set for £22.63 which has all of the pieces mentioned above included. 

The recording on this box-set and on the virtuoso piano collection is with Galliera. The first movement last about 16.5 minutes and he did record this work a few times although I can assure you this is by far his best recording of this wonderful work.

Hope this helps


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

I like the early Arrau in particular - the Weber "Konzertstück" with Defauw, the Chopin "Tarantella" (1938) 



, the Schoenberg "3 Pieces" in spite of the poor piano sound, where he adds a mysterious, Scriabinesque quality 



, the Liszt Concerto 2 studio with Cantelli (1953) (another, live one here 



) ...

Concerning the later Arrau, the Chopin Nocturnes represent a unique approach to those works


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## Muddy (Feb 5, 2012)

Arrau's recording of the Hammerklavier's epic slow movement is unmatched. The most sublime performance of one of the greatest adagios of all time.


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## JohannesBrahms (Apr 22, 2013)

If anybody here likes Bach, you should listen to Arrau's performance of the Goldberg Variations. It is a wonderful recording.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

Burroughs said:


> Claudio Arrau was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century and my personal favourite pianist.
> My favourite recordings by him:
> Schumann piano concerto: my favourite interpretation of this great work.
> Grieg piano concerto
> ...


Agreed about Carnaval, except for a slight error he makes when playing the Paganini section, embedded within Valse Allemande. I won't criticize though, those fast jumps are horrendous to play! It's amazing to strike half of those notes correctly--a single error is an achievement in itself.


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## Mesa (Mar 2, 2012)

The first solo piano CD i got was a sealed copy of Beethoven's Sonatas 23 and 26 in a charity shop for about 3 quid. He was the spritely age of 82 at the time of recording. Good grief. 

Started something for me, only Gould has anywhere near as much command over my emotions. I shall be fervently plundering this thread.


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## worov (Oct 12, 2012)

JohannesBrahms said:


> If anybody here likes Bach, you should listen to Arrau's performance of the Goldberg Variations. It is a wonderful recording.


And you should listen to his recording of the Partitas. It's amazing. Have a listen to this gigue !


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Weston said:


> I had a vinyl LP of these two works (do they ever not appear together?) that may have been recorded in the 1960s and I agree. I wore the grooves out. It was the absolute best. I have been looking for a re-release ever since. The album had a really awful cover - sort of an unhealthy ochre sepia green with the composer portraits side by side. It may have been on Columbia but it was too long ago for me to recall. Does anyone know how often he recorded the works?


Those recordings are available on CD along with Chopin's Allegro de Concert In A Major, Op.46.

Testament SBT 1233.


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## ethanjamesescano (Aug 29, 2012)

He's the best pianist I have heard!!!
the best piece recorded by him is Liebestraum no.3


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## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

Schubussy said:


> Also one of my favourites. His version of Debussy's Suite Bergamasque is amazing.


Not heard that yet, I will look into it.


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## julianoq (Jan 29, 2013)

I noticed that I have no records with Arrau on my collection, I think that I favored Ashkenazy too much after getting a few records from him and loving it. Just fixed it buying the complete Beethoven piano sonatas set from Decca!


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

His Liszt Sonata and Brahms d minor Concerto with Haitinck are among my favorites.


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## Steve Wright (Mar 13, 2015)

julianoq said:


> I noticed that I have no records with Arrau on my collection, I think that I favored Ashkenazy too much after getting a few records from him and loving it. Just fixed it buying the complete Beethoven piano sonatas set from Decca!


How are you getting on with that? I recently bought Arrau's complete Beethoven sonatas and concertos and am loving it. Listening to the fugue from Sonata 31 as I type....


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I'm not really an Arrau fan. I find some of his performances a bit fussy and needlessly slow.

However, there was one golden moment at the 92nd Street Y in NYC where he played the Schumann Symphonic Etudes and it was completely glorious. A brilliant, stunning conception. Spoiled me for any other performances of it and that includes Sviatoslav Richter.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

What do the people who are into Beethoven think about all his recordings of the Waldstein?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> What do the people who are into Beethoven think about all his recordings of the Waldstein?


Listening to that now, from the Great Recording series. Superlative certainly. He pretty well nails it. Don't know about other recordings, but I doubt he could go too far wrong.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Listening to that now, from the Great Recording series. Superlative certainly. He pretty well nails it. Don't know about other recordings, but I doubt he could go too far wrong.


Is that the September 1963 one? If so it is, in my experience, quite a divisive performance. Some people think that he takes it too slowly, that it's somehow sleepy,and that there is not enough of the sort of thrill which comes hearing from virtuoso playing. I like it a lot myself, I think it's deep.

The reason I said "people into Beethoven" is that some of the Beethoven admirers I know seem to think that his music is essentially promethian. And promethian, heroic, is definitely something that the 1963 Waldstein ain't.

There are a lot of recordings of the Waldstein by Arrau, it was one of the Beethoven sonatas he had ideas about, cared about, explored over all his career. It's not totally uninteresting to see how his ideas evolved.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Njj jdIjcmcmxkmxmksmd,d,dydnx,


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## shadowdancer (Mar 31, 2014)

I would like to point also a nice moment from Arrau:
Debussy's Suite Bergamasque from the "Final Sessions" (Philips) Box.
Such a nice recording....
The Complete Beethoven Piano Sonata has also a special place in my taste, mostly his Hammerklavier.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Arrau's performance of the Waldstein is controversial. 

There are those who point out to the slownes and lack of 'wildness' of his interpretation, criticising him for not following through what is thought to be Beethoven's wishes. Others applaud it for its transparency and its carefully considered approach that shows up 'different' elements of this work. I guess opinions on each side of the fence are valid and that there is no need to hurl attacks back and forward - it will clearly be a matter of personal preference whether you like it or not.

Me? I actually enjoy his playing of this sonata (and much else that he played)


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## merlinus (Apr 12, 2014)

I enjoy most of his recordings. He always tries to plumb the depths of possible meanings.

His Emperor concerto with Colin Davis is still tops, for me.


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## Dirge (Apr 10, 2012)

I almost always prefer Arrau live to Arrau studio, and I tend to prefer his performances from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s-a sort of ideally balanced transitional period after his conspicuously virtuosic younger days and before his conspicuously profound older days. If I have a favorite Arrau recording, it's his live account of Chopin's Preludes from Prague Spring 1960 …

Frédéric CHOPIN: 24 Preludes, Op. 28
:: Claudio Arrau [APR, live from Prague Spring 1960]

"As I say, I never think of them as single pieces. They answer one another. When I finish one of them, I need to play the next. In a way, they are a survey of Chopin's cosmos. Alternating light and shade."-from _Arrau on Music and Performance_ by Joseph Horowitz

Arrau practices what he preaches, as his performance really does have an organic quality about it that brings unexpected unity to this diverse opus, with each prelude in turn providing a contrasting but complementary response to its predecessor-it's all very yin and yang. Relatedly, his beautifully judged pauses (or lack thereof) between preludes help facilitate continuity to a surprising degree, allowing the music to flow as in a well-timed dialogue. If there's less overt contrast and variety from prelude to prelude here than in other performances, then there's that much more insidious contrast and variety, which fosters both continuity and cumulative impact. Indeed, the performance has a seductive siren-like quality about it that gradually strengthens its hold on the listener throughout, eventually luring him to his D-minor doom in the stormy final prelude, which fully embodies Cortot's description: "Du sang, de la volupté, de la mort" ("Of blood, of earthly pleasure, of death"). As such, this is not a recording that rewards dipping into here and there so much as it does listening straight through. And while the occasional individual prelude performance may strike me as being too slow or not phrased exactly to my liking in absolute terms, I have no problem with any of them in context.

The performance as a whole has a somewhat dark, ominous, disturbed disposition, and each prelude is well characterized within that context-especially the dark, ominous, disturbed ones. Arrau plays with uncommon weight and gravitas but without sounding heavy handed or encumbered, tickling the ivories or whipping up a storm with a dexterity, even nimbleness, that belies the weight of his playing. Most impressive, perhaps, is his ability to make the music sound so organic and spontaneous on the surface while making it feel so sturdy and well-founded underneath-no mean trick, and one that might be described as "art concealing architecture." [Jed Distler's review comment that "Arrau's organic feeling for the music's underlying polyphony (as opposed to picking out 'inner voices' at random) belies Richard Wagner's description of Chopin as a 'one-handed composer'" sounds about right to me, but I'm easily swayed on all matters "Chopin," a subject that I don't have a particularly good grasp of.]

Even if you consider each prelude a little world unto itself and don't see a need to go to great lengths to relate them one to another in any formal or organic way, this performance is so exemplary in its way and just plain well-played that it's worth hearing in any event-if nothing else, it's the ultimate alternative/complementary recording to most any other recording out there (that I know of).

It's difficult to pick highlights from such a performance, but I will say that the faster and/or more étude-ish preludes are played with impressive, almost scary, proficiency-especially considering that it's a live performance. The mono recording is pretty good by live 1960 standards: a bit diffuse and distorted, but nothing distracting except in the most rambunctious of passages. The transfer seems to have been accomplished with much care, though I get the sense that the high frequencies have been over-filtered.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Dirge said:


> I almost always prefer Arrau live to Arrau studio, and I tend to prefer his performances from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s-a sort of ideally balanced transitional period after his conspicuously virtuosic younger days and before his conspicuously profound older days. If I have a favorite Arrau recording, it's his live account of Chopin's Preludes from Prague Spring 1960 …
> 
> Frédéric CHOPIN: 24 Preludes, Op. 28
> :: Claudio Arrau [APR, live from Prague Spring 1960]
> ...


If you feel like this then I hope you can try his 80th birthday DVD, which to my mind has an op 53 which is every bit as inspired as those Chopin preludes. I much prefer it to the studio recording he made a year later in 1984, which never seems to quite get off the ground to me. What do you make of the Schumann from the same recital as the Preludes?


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## Dirge (Apr 10, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> What do you make of the Schumann from the same recital as the Preludes?


Arrau takes a deadly serious edifice-building approach to _Études symphoniques_ in his Prague Spring 1976 performance, doing his darnedest to relate each étude to its neighbors and to the whole in order to best live up to the theme & variations architecture of things. He adopts moderate to slowish tempos for the most part, but he takes interpretive advantage of the extra time they afford him while maintaining a determined sense of continuity and progression, binding everything together through interpretive savvy and pianistic gravitas. His playing here doesn't have the man-possessed level of inner intensity that marks the coupled account of Chopin's Preludes from 16 years earlier, but the formally related études don't require nearly as much coaxing/motivation/forcible persuasion to play well together as the freelance preludes do. Still, I can't help wishing that Arrau had recorded _Études symphoniques_ along with the Preludes back in 1960. Wishful thinking aside, Arrau's is the most interesting and absorbing account of the work that I know.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

For me Claudio Arrau was at his best performing the solo piano music of Brahms and Schumann:

The Handel Variations and Fugue by Brahms, the Fantasie in C and Symphonic Variations by Schumann, for example.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

A very tempting new set with 12 CDs of early recordings, his most interesting period IMO - here with mp3 samples:
http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Sony/88843071652
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/complete-collection/hnum/5002892


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> Njj jdIjcmcmxkmxmksmd,d,dydnx,


Still working this one out .


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

I have the Arrau Beethoven Sonatas & Schumann sets. I actually particularly like the Beethoven set because he plays the Adagios more slowly as do/did Emil Gilels and Barenboim, particularly #1, 4, 5, 7, Hammerklavier and #32 (sadly Gilels died before recording the latter). IMO, playing these Adagios too fast makes them sound perfunctory.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

I saw him at the 92nd St. Y as well - but at an all Beethoven recital in the 1980's. I recently picked up his Beethoven sonata cycle (which I first owned on LP decades ago). I had forgotten how good it is. I also love his Chopin.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

jegreenwood said:


> I saw him at the 92nd St. Y as well - but at an all Beethoven recital in the 1980's. I recently picked up his Beethoven sonata cycle (which I first owned on LP decades ago). I had forgotten how good it is. I also love his Chopin.


I do agree with you, he may be a bit eccentric but his playing is phenomenal.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Pugg said:


> I do agree with you, he may be a bit eccentric but his playing is phenomenal.


Back in the early days of CDs, Philips (RIP) put out a mid-price Silverline disc of selections from Arrau's Chopin. It remains my favorite single disc of Chopin.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I should've bought Arrau's Beethoven Sonatas set instead of the one I did buy. The only Arrau I have is a Philips Chopin Waltzes CD a relative gave me ages ago. The first piece in E flat major is very famous, but it's a bit too sentimental for my taste.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

starthrower said:


> I should've bought Arrau's Beethoven Sonatas set instead of the one I did buy. The only Arrau I have is a Philips Chopin Waltzes CD a relative gave me ages ago. The first piece in E flat major is very famous, but it's a bit too sentimental for my taste.


Those waltzes are probably the most eccentric Chopin playing I have ever heard. The tempo unbelievably bold. I love them!


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Mandryka said:


> Those waltzes are probably the most eccentric Chopin playing I have ever heard. The tempo unbelievably bold. I love them!


Arrau's Chopin Nocturnes are wonderful. Expressive, diverse tempo, takes a while to grow on you.
And his Schubert Impromptus are excellent.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

More Arrau lovers the I expected .


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Pugg said:


> More Arrau lovers the I expected .


I have always respected Arrau as an 'honest' pianist who simply played the music as it seemed to him the composer intended, regardless of any current trends or fashions.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Still, there are lots of eccentricities and some pretty boring recordings by him too. 

Pre-1955 Arrau can be very wild, improvisatory and romantically coloured, like in the Weber Konzertstück with Defauw for example, and the later Chopin Nocturnes/Philips are highly unusual in their style too. 

Whereas some of the later recordings are downright bloodless and of less interest, IMHO.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

joen_cph said:


> Pre-1955 Arrau can be very wild. . .
> Whereas some of the later recordings are downright bloodless and of less interest, IMHO.


He stopped being bloody and wild, I think because he became interested in psychology. For me that makes many of the later recordings interesting because I think they're deep.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> He stopped being bloody and wild, I think because he became interested in psychology. For me that makes many of the later recordings interesting because I think they're deep.


I didn´t mean to dismiss all his later recordings of course, but our taste as regards subdued approaches is no doubt different at times.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

A superlative Liszt sonata. I must get much, much more music by him!


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Lyrical and lively. Wonderful with Schumann. Just perfect… and always with richness and depth. One of the best Philips recordings he ever made. Lush, gorgeous sound. A favorite.


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

I've always loved Arrau's 60s Beethoven cycle: particularly the late sonatas and his readings of 17, 21 and 23.

I've recently been sampling more of his recording legacy on Spotify, and I can't help but feel slightly regretful that, with all the 'Arrau - Heritage' albums now available, he is captured most in his 'mature' years, where his interpretations have a kind of 'looseness' and wandering feel to them and often what comes across to me as a lack of vitality and sculpting of phrases.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

The thing that has surprised me most in recent years about Arrau has been how wonderful his Mozart sonatas are. His set remains one of the best for me and certainly the earliest of the really good ones.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RogerWaters said:


> I've always loved Arrau's 60s Beethoven cycle: particularly the late sonatas and his readings of 17, 21 and 23.
> 
> I've recently been sampling more of his recording legacy on Spotify, and I can't help but feel slightly regretful that, with all the 'Arrau - Heritage' albums now available, he is captured most in his 'mature' years, where his interpretations have a kind of 'looseness' and wandering feel to them and often what comes across to me as a lack of vitality and sculpting of phrases.


What do you think of is Davidsbundlertanze? And his Diabelli Variations? They're two things by him which interest me.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Are the "heritage" the very late recordings from the 1980s or the "classic" stereo recordings from the 1960s-70s or both?
I am not following this in detail but by now there are probably also most "early" (30s-50s) Arrau recordings in some form or shape, as well as live recordings. But it's not an exception for artists born around 1900 to be discographically best represented by recordings made when they were 60+.

When I got into classical in the late 1980s Arrau was together with Horowitz the most legendary of the "old pianists" still alive and many recordings were standard recommendations and heavily advertised. Maybe due to the demise of the Philips label this changed in the last 20 years.
I have his 1960s Beethoven sonatas (with variations, unfortunately this issue botched the tracks in op. 34 or 35 and for some reason there is an older mono recording of the Diabellis included instead of the late one, apparently there is no Diabelli recording from the time of the sonatas), late Schubert from the same vintage (he re-recorded some of this) and some Schumann and Brahms. I think he is too slow ("magisterial" is the euphemism I guess) in (studio recordings of) the famous middle period Beethoven sonatas like opp.53/57 but I found some of the late Beethoven and (3) late Schubert sonatas more convincing.
Need to relisten to the early Beethoven. 
My favorites are probably the live Handel variations on Ermitage, there is also a live Schumann fantasy. Have not heard his Davidsbündler, I have two discs from the studio Schumann I kept without them being favorites.


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## RogerWaters (Feb 13, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> What do you think of is Davidsbundlertanze? And his Diabelli Variations? They're two things by him which interest me.


Both good - his Davidsbundlertanze on the Schumann Arrau Heritage album seemed one of the better pieces to me. Comparing his Kinderszenen (at least on that recordings) to someone like Argerich, though, wasn't as flattering.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I like the late Humoresque too. Such good sound!


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Somewheres down in the garage I've got Arrau's recording of Chopin's Preludes.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

pianozach said:


> Somewheres down in the garage I've got Arrau's recording of Chopin's Preludes.


There's at least the old Columbia, and a later Philips.


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## Holden4th (Jul 14, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> What do you think of is Davidsbundlertanze? And his Diabelli Variations? They're two things by him which interest me.


His Diabelli's are the bees knees for me. One of the very few pianists to make these sound like an integral set as opposed to 33 separate pieces. While I am not a great fan of his Beethoven I love his way with Op 111. I'm referring to an EMI DVD from their now defunct "Classic Archive" series. I've also heard a live recording that was very similar. The Arietta is just superb. He doesn't rush it as so many do and extracts moments out of it that are ethereal.

Another recording worth investigating is his transversal of the the Liszt Transcendental Etudes. There's also a recording out out there of the Chopin Preludes live from Prague in 1976 on the APR label which is now oop. All three I've mentioned are on YT.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Holden4th said:


> His Diabelli's are the bees knees for me. One of the very few pianists to make these sound like an integral set as opposed to 33 separate pieces. While I am not a great fan of his Beethoven I love his way with Op 111. I'm referring to an EMI DVD from their now defunct "Classic Archive" series. I've also heard a live recording that was very similar. The Arietta is just superb. He doesn't rush it as so many do and extracts moments out of it that are ethereal.
> 
> Another recording worth investigating is his transversal of the the Liszt Transcendental Etudes. There's also a recording out out there of the Chopin Preludes live from Prague in 1976 on the APR label which is now oop. All three I've mentioned are on YT.


Appassionata is the sonata where I think he's at his most valuable.


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## Coach G (Apr 22, 2020)

To me Claudio Arrau is very classy and elegant; at least in the latter Philips recordings I have by him of the solo piano music of Chopin, Debussy, Beethoven, and Liszt. I once read an interview with Arrau where he said that he liked playing the music of Berio and Boulez for himself in his New York City apartment and would like to have performed or recorded such music but said, "My audience would never stand for it." Still, I would have liked to have heard what such a sophisticated class-act as Arrau would have done with such wild, abstract, avant-guarde music.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

joen_cph said:


> There's at least the old Columbia, and a later Philips.


It's this one, on Phillips. I don't have a clue when it was recorded or released.


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## Holden4th (Jul 14, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Appassionata is the sonata where I think he's at his most valuable.


Which ones? There are nineteen listed on the ArrauHouse website ranging from 1954 to 1985. Obviously a favourite piece of his but I've never heard him in this work.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Mandryka said:


> Try to hear this for the Beethoven and the Schumann. I think it's one of the more interesting Arrau recordings
> 
> https://pianistdiscography.com/discography/pianistLabel.php?cdnum=443


This is live 1959 on Ermitage.

I had almost forgotten that I had this disc and that it included an op.57. This is a very passionate interpretation, also the Schumann fantasy and the sound is decent for a 60 yo live recording. Maybe it's because it's live or Arrau was a bit younger than for most of his studio recordings.
My first Arrau Beethoven was a disc with some 3 out of these op.13, 27/2, 53, 57. I was rather disappointed by that one, but another disc with op.106 (+101?) was better. This was at a time when the complete LvB sonatas with Arrau were not readily available. I eventually got the box with sonatas and variations when it became available again ("Decca") but overall found it a mixed bag. I am not sure if I I listened to the whole box systematically though; maybe once but I think I got stuck in the middle.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> This is live 1959 on Ermitage.
> 
> I had almost forgotten that I had this disc and that it included an op.57. This is a very passionate interpretation, also the Schumann fantasy and the sound is decent for a 60 yo live recording. Maybe it's because it's live or Arrau was a bit younger than for most of his studio recordings.
> My first Arrau Beethoven was a disc with some 3 out of these op.13, 27/2, 53, 57. I was rather disappointed by that one, but another disc with op.106 (+101?) was better. This was at a time when the complete LvB sonatas with Arrau were not readily available. I eventually got the box with sonatas and variations when it became available again ("Decca") but overall found it a mixed bag. I am not sure if I I listened to the whole box systematically though; maybe once but I think I got stuck in the middle.


There's one from 1973 on Haenssler which I think is also very valuable.


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