Claudio Arrau (piano)
The Ambassador Auditorium Recitals, Pasadena, California, USA
rec. 13 February 1977, 10 February 1981, 18 February 1986, Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, CA
First Hand Records FHR172 [5 CD; 289]

Previous releases in this series include a 5-CD from Shura Cherkassky [FHR99], and two releases from Youri Egorov [FHR44 and 47D]. Now we have a 5-CD Arrau set that presents three recitals from the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, California covering almost a decade – 1977, 1981 and 1986.

The repertoire is canonic and you’d not expect any excursions into the unknown at this stage in Arrau’s professional life. At the time of the first recital, he was 74 and by the last he was 86 and was to die three years later, in June 1991. Though all recitals at this venue were recorded, it wasn’t intended that any of the performances should be released commercially, so it’s good news that the sound quality is excellent across the years.

The first recital, which runs across the first two discs, reflected his uncompromising approach to the repertoire. There are three sonatas – Beethoven’s Op.109, followed by Liszt and finally Brahms’ Sonata No.3 in F minor, Op.5. The first two movements of the Beethoven may be conventional, strictly in terms of tempo relationships, but he invariably seems to have taken the finale at an unusually slow speed – here 15 minutes in length. The tonal depth, emotive gravity and also textural clarity he finds are all convincing constituents of the performance, even for those who may be less sympathetic to the conception. The Liszt Sonata, however, drew from him over the years a more varied response. His famous Philips LP recording set an awesomely high standard, and this 1977 recital isn’t quite in that league. Yet its sonorous intensity is almost improvisational in its traversing of the music’s rhetoric and at this stage in his life he had not yielded to the relative slowness of his 1985 Decca reading which stretched to 32 minutes. Brahms’ Sonata is a more typically ‘central’ Arrau interpretation, deeply expressive in the Andante, and consistent with his Turku recital from 1977 preserved on Music & Arts, though there are a few trivial slips in this recital.

The second recital, which starts with Beethoven’s Sonata Op.27/1 ‘Quasi una fantasia’, ends CD 2. In terms of conceptual surety and sonic richness there’s nothing to separate this reading from his Brescia recital of 1973 and it offers the same shafts of intense feeling marshalled for the structural benefit of the sonata, and the same directness free of artifice. He continued the February 1981 recital with Schumann’s Symphonic Etudes. He includes all the posthumous variations but, compared with his 1970 Decca LP, there are subtle variations in his placement of them, given he changes their ordering. As ever in this work, he never takes easy options and whilst he tends to be sedate in tempo, he’s certainly fleeter here than in 1970 – he’s a good two minutes quicker. The result is a full-scaled, serious-minded reading full of amplitude and depth, if very occasionally a little lacking in humour and a touch pedantic. Debussy’s Estampes follows, powerfully conveyed if with a few fingerslips, Chopin’s Fantaisie in F minor is textually rich and Liszt’s Après une lecture du Dante, ‘Fantasia quasi Sonata’  mines the ultimate in gravity at a measured tempo.

The final recital is split between discs 4 and 5 and for his final appearance at the Ambassador Auditorium, refusing, as ever, to take easy options, Arrau presented four Beethoven sonatas. The opening Presto of Op.10 No.3 is brightly lit though, perhaps inevitably, its slow movement is taken with deliberation. The Appassionata’s opening may have lost a little impetus over the years but the other two movements are largely consistent with previous performances and tenaciously controlled. A slight diminution in energy is a feature of the finale of Op.81a, ‘Les Adieux’ – the slips in this performance are minor and hardly worth noting given the level of concentration necessary for 86-year-old Arrau to convey the essence of these sonatas. The Waldstein ends the recital and just to demonstrate how futile can be the business of adjudicating between timings, Arrau plays at almost the tempo he adopted in his EMI recording of 1956-57, three decades before. As ever it’s a case of expressive shading, and emphases, set against which a slightly tiring Arrau’s slips are (again) of no significance, except to pedants.

There is a helpful and lucid booklet note from Jonathan Summers, Curator of Classical Music at the British Library, that sets the seal on this finely produced and consistently enlightening set.

Jonathan Woolf

Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free

Contents
CD 1 [51:12]
13 February 1977
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109
Franz LISZT (1811–1886)
Sonata in B minor, S178CD 2 [57:24]
Johannes BRAHMS (1833–1897)
Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5
10 February 1981
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No. 13 in E flat major, Op. 27, No. 1, ‘Quasi una fantasia’

CD 3 [63:58]
Robert SCHUMANN (1810–1856)
Symphonic Etudes, Op. 13
Claude DEBUSSY (1862–1918)
Estampes
Frédéric CHOPIN (1810–1849)
Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49

CD 4 [71:31]
Franz LISZT
Années de pèlerinage, deuxième année – Italie, S161: Après une lecture du Dante, ‘Fantasia quasi Sonata’
18 February 1986
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No. 7 in D major, Op. 10, No. 3
Piano Sonata No. 21 in C major, Op. 53, ‘Waldstein’

CD 5 [45:20]
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN
Piano Sonata No. 26 in E flat major, Op. 81a, ‘Les adieux’
Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, Op. 57, ‘Appassionata’

Height of his powers, particularly in the 1977 recording…. he has the most enormous sound in this series of recordings… some ferocious virtuosity… the Debussy is a miracle for me… precious and luminous sounds … ‘Les Adieux’ is precious, in the first movement… brings tears to your eyes.. such a fascinating reference recording’ (BBC Radio 3, ‘Record Review’)