As a young virtuoso, Claudio Arrau was renowned for playing long programs and tackling technically challenging works like Albeniz’s Iberia. From mid-life onwards he concentrated on the German tradition and mainstream repertoire. He reached his full maturity in the mid-1950s, when most of the recordings in the EMI box were made. This set contains the five Beethoven concertos, a selection of sonatas, and concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms.

Arrau was never a mere technician. In a 1970s broadcast
 of Brahms’s Second Concerto, he swayed and grimaced like a
 soul in torment. That is both the upside and downside of these recordings: he approaches each forte as if it was Mount Everest, and handles lyrical themes as if officiating at High Mass. Take
 the limpid piano melody in the second movement of Grieg’s concerto: its innate simplicity eludes him as he inflects every note with emotional significance. In his desire to make the instrument resonate he overuses the sustaining pedal, which would have been effective in a vast auditorium but turns muddy in the studio. By contrast, Alceo Galliera and the Philharmonia, who accompany most of the concertos, are a model of clarity.

Arrau’s Beethoven is fascinating. Often he is a true poet of the keyboard – how beautifully he negotiates the bridge 
into the third movement of the Waldstein Sonata – yet he doesn’t have a playful bone in his body, so the early sonatas are uncomfortably weighty. This music should be mercurial, abrupt, cheekily confronting; in Arrau’s über-heroic world it is not. His temperament is best suited to the formidable Op 111.

The Decca set of complete sonatas comes from a decade later. The piano sound is an improvement on his earlier recordings, while the pianist’s technique, interpretative choices and strength of purpose remain unchanged.

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