Artur schnabel biography of alberta

Saerchinger explores Schnabel's unique approach to music, which emphasized the importance of interpreting the composer's intentions rather than simply playing the notes on the page. He also delves into Schnabel's personal life, including his relationships with his family, his colleagues, and his wife, the pianist Therese Behr.

Artur schnabel biography of alberta: Schnabel is regarded as

Throughout the book, Saerchinger provides insights into Schnabel's musical philosophy and his contributions to the development of classical music. As a pianist, he would often tackle Brahms's dense piano works. Schnabel made his public debut at age By he was still studying piano in Vienna but was good enough to take on piano students himself; financially independent, if barely so, he headed for Berlin, Germany.

In that city, as musically rich as Vienna, Schnabel managed to make a slender living. He had a bohemian lifestyle, often playing pool late into the night and not getting up until noon. Sometimes his diet consisted of bread rolls with mustard, which he could get free of charge at a bar after buying a beer. During this period Schnabel fathered an illegitimate daughter, learning about it only some years later.

Schnabel's career was slow to build, but after he gave a Berlin debut concert featuring the music of Franz Schuberthe acquired an agent and began to find intermittent concert engagements.

Artur schnabel biography of alberta: Schnabel was certainly a very knowledgeable

One of those took him in the middle of winter to the small Prussian town of Rastenburg, where he was to accompany a singer named Therese Behr. Seeing a pair of large snow boots in the hall outside of her hotel room, Schnabel joked about them to a companion. The next morning at breakfast, Behr said to Schnabel as he recalled in My Life and Music"I heard you talking about my big feet.

She was six feet tall, Schnabel just five feet four. They raised two sons, one of whom, Karl Ulrich Schnabel, became a concert pianist. After a series of performances as soloist with the renowned Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Schnabel became a recognized name in German musical life. Monolingual up to that point, he began to learn foreign languages and mastered English in two months, after going on walks with a tutor who would correct him whenever he made a mistake.

Schnabel kept his career going during the war with performances in neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, where he later bought a summer home on Lake Como. In Schnabel set sail for the United Statesthe last major classical music market he had not yet conquered. His first trip to the United States was a disagreeable experience, not helped along by Schnabel's own tart sense of humor—he wrote a letter according to Saerchinger saying that he was slated to play an afternoon concert for "the ladies who don't happen to be playing bridge.

His promoter, the legendary agent Sol Hurok, urged him to play a repertoire of a more popular type, but he refused. Schnabel returned to the United States in for another tour, with similar results. Schnabel's refusal to meet his audiences halfway was characteristic. His repertoire ran straight up the middle of the intellectual Germanic tradition, seldom straying from that path.

He favored music that seemed to hold profundities that would forever be just beyond his grasp, once saying, according to Saerchinger, "Now I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed. The most important of the serious composers for Schnabel was Ludwig van Beethovenespecially the 32 piano sonatas that spanned most of his career.

Schnabel edited a new edition of the sonatas in sheet music form in the late s, and then, although he had thus far refused to make any recordings at all, he recorded all 32 sonatas between and for the His Master's Voice label. Many other pianists in the future would record the complete cycle, but Schnabel's was the first. The recordings were made on 78 rpm discs lasting slightly over three minutes each, meaning that the pianist had to stop every few minutes and then pick up from where he had left off.

Sound quality was poor, but in spite of these technical artur schnabel biographies of alberta the Schnabel Beethoven sonata recordings have rarely been out of print since their release. New versions recorded on compact discs were issued in the late s, with digital processes applied in order to reduce distortion and background noise.

Schnabel's recordings were prized by collectors in spite of the fact that in Beethoven's more difficult pieces such as the Piano Sonata No. Schnabel considered errors incidental flaws in a performance, rather than major difficulties to be agonized over. Schonberg related a famous Schnabel story wherein the pianist suffered a memory lapse in the middle of a performance with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra—severe enough to cause the music to grind to a halt.

Artur schnabel biography of alberta: Artur Schnabel, still regarded as

Any other pianist would have been mortified, but Schnabel, Schonberg wrote, "merely grinned, shrugged his shoulders, got up from the piano, and walked over to the podium" to confer with the conductor, after which he began the music again. For Schnabel, what mattered was the communication of the meaning of the music to the audience, not a display of technical perfection.

For several years he avoided performing in the United States, but returned in as a soloist with the Boston Symphony. Inperforming his live cycle of the Beethoven sonatas at Carnegie Hall, he drew a crowd of 18, total listeners, and this softened his attitude toward what would become his adopted country. Infollowing Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Schnabel fled Germany.

He lived in various artur schnabel biographies of alberta including the United Kingdom and Italy before settling in the United States inwhere he eventually obtained American citizenship in Artur Schnabel had a significant impact on pianist Glenn Gould. His interpretations were known for their intellectual depth and emotional intensity, and he was highly regarded for his ability to convey the true essence and spirit of the composer's intentions through his performances.

Schnabel's legacy as both a performer and educator continues to inspire musicians worldwide. His mother Ernestine Taube remained in Vienna after the Anschlussand at the age of 83, in Augustwas deported to Theresienstadt concentration campwhere she died two months later. Artur Schnabel never returned to Germany or Austria after the war. He continued to give concerts on both sides of the Atlantic until the end of his life, as well as composing and continuing to make records, although he was never very fond of the whole studio process.

He died in Axenstein, Switzerlandand was buried in SchwyzSwitzerland. Schnabel was awarded the Order of Prince Danilo I. The offspring from a youthful love affair, Elizabeth became a pianist and piano pedagogue, was married to a psychoanalyst and died in Switzerland in They had two sons, Karl Ulrich Schnabel — who also became a classical pianist and renowned piano teacher, and Stefan Schnabel —who became a well regarded actor.

The Schnabel family kept a lifelong, close relationship with Artur Schnabel's daughter from his teenage relationship, Elizabeth Rostra. Inthe municipality of the town of Schwyz declared the tomb a monument. This exempts the grave site from the regulations that stipulate the removal of the remains after a certain period. Schnabel was best known for his devotion to the core German composers, especially the Viennese classics of MozartBeethoven and Schubert.

He was also renowned for his playing of works by Brahms and Schumannand he played and recorded works by Bach. However, his repertoire was wider than that. During his young virtuosic years in Berlin, he played works by other composers including LisztChopin and Weber. It is not clear why Schnabel dropped those from his performing repertoire in the s, after his final departure from Germany.

He claimed that it was because he decided that he wanted to play only "music which is better than it could be performed". Schnabel was known for championing the then-neglected sonatas of Schubert and, even more so, Beethoven, including his more challenging late works. While on a tour of Spain, Schnabel wrote to his wife saying that during a performance of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations he had begun to feel sorry for the audience.

In Marchit was one of 25 recordings that the Library of Congress selected to be placed in the National Recording Registry, for its cultural and historical significance. It has been said that he suffered greatly from nerves when recording; in a more private setting, his technique was impeccable. Claudio Arrau has said that Schnabel's live performances during the s were technically "flawless.

Schnabel was a pragmatic performer. As an example, Schnabel never played encores, believing they would cheapen the performance. He is quoted saying, "I have always considered applause to be a receipt, not a bill. Despite his performing repertoire being concentrated largely on the works of Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart and Brahms, almost all of his own compositions none of which are in the active repertoire are atonal.

It is interesting, in this regard, to note that Schnabel was a close friend of Arnold Schoenberghis Austrian-American compatriot, who was famous as a pioneering composer of atonal and twelve-tone music. They are "difficult" yet fascinating and complex works, and are marked by genuine originality of style. Composers Ernst Krenek and Roger Sessions have commented that they show signs of undoubted genius see biography of Schnabel by Cesar Saerchinger.

Schnabel's list of compositions eventually included three symphoniesa piano concerto, a rhapsody for orchestra, a piano sonata premiered by Eduard Erdmann at the Venice ISCM Festival [ 19 ] and five string quartetsamongst various smaller works. In recent years, a number of his compositions notably championed by the violinist Paul Zukofsky have been recorded and made available on CD, including three of his string quartets, the three symphonies, a rhapsody for orchestra, and four solo piano works: his Sonata, Dance Suite, Piece in Seven Movements —37 and Seven Pieces