Artur Schnabel is a pianist unlike any other. One is conscious in listening to him of a powerful and original mind revealing unsuspected meanings and complications in music as familiar as Brahms’s Intermezzi and Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. His tone is a rule dry in anything above a piano, but a sudden touch of the pedal will sometimes irradiate it, while in his pianissimo, he has endless variety. He played to a full house at Grotrian Hall for the Pianoforte Society on November 26, and appeared less like a pianist playing music than like a scientist who discourses a fascinating subject.
The Musical Times, January 1928.
Cited in Scholes, Percy (1947) The Mirror of Music. London: Novello and Company, vol. 1, p.320.
On Artur Schnable’s playing
by
Tags:
Featured Content
Remembering J. S. Bach
Carl Philip Emanuel Bach recalled his father’s (Johann Sebastian) talents as a musician: The exact tuning of his own instruments, and of the whole orchestra, had his greatest attention. No one could tune and quill his instruments to his satisfaction; he did it all himself. The positioning of an orchestra he understood perfectly. He made good use of […]
Leave Me Alone (Lasst mich allein) (Dvorak)Title: Leave me alone (Lasst mich allein) (op. 82, no. 1) Composer: Antonin Dvorak Text: Ottilie Malybrok-Stieler Arranger: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Don’t loaf and invite inspirationDon’t dash off a six-thousand-word story before breakfast. Don’t write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will none the less get something that looks remarkably like it. […]
A musician’s canvas“A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.” -Leopold Stokowski, conductor
Difficult music is the easiest to playScriabin’s fiery D#-minor Etude, with its relentless triplets and huge leaps, used to just fall under my fingers, while the Lento final movement of the Copland Sonata was a minefield of wrong notes. Why is that? Is it just because we practice hard music 20 times as much as easy music, or is it psychological, […]
The Lord is my Light (Setting II) – Psalm 26 (27)Title: The Lord is my light (Setting II) Text: Psalm 26 (27): 1, 4, 13-14. R. v.1 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Debussy’s reception in EnglandIn 1908-9, Claude Debussy made two appearances conducting his own works in England. The Musical Times reported on the occasions. The report on the first concert: Nothing could have been heartier than the applause which greeted M. Claude Debussy as he stepped on to the platform at Queen’s Hall on February 1. The warmth of […]
Teaching methodAn unknown piece by BrahmsAn undiscovered piano piece by Brahms (entitled Albumblatt, meaning “sheet music from an album”) has been discovered by Christopher Hogwood at Princeton University. The tune reappears in second movement of Brahms’ Horn Trio, written 12 years later. Alex Needham, “Brahms piano piece to get its premiere 159 years after its creation”, The Guardian, 13 January […]
Tin Pan AlleyTin Pan Alley refers to the concentration of music publishers in New York City, West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. It started around 1885 and lasted till the depression in the 1930s. It’s title comes from the the sound of all the cheap, tinny pianos playing, being likened to the beating of tin […]
