Tag: Artur Schnabel

  • On Artur Schnable’s playing

    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…

  • Music better than it can be performed

    Now I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed. Therefore I feel (rightly or wrongly) that unless a piece of music presents a problem to me, a neverending problem, it doesn’t interest me too much. For instance, Chopin’s studies are lovely pieces, perfect pieces, but I…

  • The career of a musician compared to other arts

    The career of a musician out to be — it is, actually, and in many ways — different from the careers of artists in other fields of art.  All comparisons of the other arts with music are necessarily somewhat superficial.  The art of music needs, essentially, not much contact with social groups, or concern with…

  • Schnabel on recording

    Having spent five days recording five Beethoven sonatas and two concertos, Schnabel wrote to his wife: This week was an ordeal, a torture chamber. “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” says Nietzsche. Hopefully (probably) this is true. I had no idea of how outrageous a process the recording on discs could be. Like…

  • Seeking challenges

    Pianist Artur Schnabel was asked at a public forum why his repertoire was so restricted: My answer is that now I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed.  Therefore I feel (rightly or wrongly) that unless a piece of music presents a problem to me, a…