Diabelli Variations / Bagatelles

"The transfer of sound from the original shellac 78s is done by engineering magician, Mark Obert-Thorn. One knows it's not modern sound, but one wouldn't think it is from the 30s. I've reviewed several of this series, but so far this is my favorite. I can't stop playing it. If you buy only one of this new series, I urge you to try this one."
- Scott Morrison, Amazon.com, February 17, 2004

Artur Schnabel was born in 1882 and in the half century since his death in 1951 he has emerged as something of an icon of modern music. As a composer of atonal music and a performer of classical repertoire, he occupies an unusual place among twentieth-century pianists. He was fond of recounting that his teacher in Vienna Theodore Leschetizky would often remind him 'You will never be a pianist. You are a musician'. The remark may have been both a reference to the pupil's dislike for practice and a comment on his natural talent. At sixteen, with his education complete, he left Vienna for Berlin to pursue his career. During the first two decades in Berlin, chamber music occupied much of Schnabel's time. With the violinist Carl Flesch and others, he formed some of the leading ensembles of the era and performed widely. After the First World War he turned increasingly to composition and to Beethoven's piano sonatas.

For many years Schnabel refused to make recordings, believing, among other things, that the technology was simply not up to the task. When he finally relented he did so on his own terms, persuading H.M.V. to record all of Beethoven's solo piano music, and the present Beethoven Sonata Society discs were initially sold very successfully by subscription. Still, the process of recording was not a happy one for Schnabel. Although the series became a landmark in recording history, a comparison of the reviews of his recitals and recordings leaves one with the impression that the recordings offer only a glimpse of what Schnabel could achieve in the concert hall. In October 1936, the critic Alec Robertson reported in The Gramophone that Schnabel was "very far from being a good recording artist, perhaps because he refuses to take into account the limitations of the apparatus, and because his outlook, as an artist, is not one best suited to the gramophone". The 'outlook' referred to was uncompromising and not well suited to the recording technology of the 1930s. Given his status as the leading Beethoven specialist of his time (or perhaps ever), each disc became the subject of intense scrutiny. The recordings of the sonatas on the present disc received closer attention than most, and the reviews were mixed. In a March 1938 review, The Gramophone reported that among "the most notable performances …[was] a most remarkable reading of the 'Waldstein' Sonata, Op. 53, in Vol. 9", and that although there were few disappointments, the Sonata in D minor was "the least successful of all". Another critic, Robert A. Hall, Jr., noted in the August 1937 issue of The Gramophone that "there are, of course, as would be inevitable, a few disappointing records among the long list of Schnabel issues. The Beethoven Sonata in D minor, Op. 31, No. 2, is decidedly inferior to Gieseking's recording of the same work; here Schnabel seems, indeed, for once (and only once!) too dry and analytical".

Schnabel's reputation as a 'scholar-performer' became something that nearly every critic had to address. Following a Carnegie Hall recital in February 1936, Olin Downes reported in the New York Times: "Let no one think that Mr Schnabel, for all his objectivity and analysis, is a purely objective player. Quite the contrary!" He described Schnabel's interpretation of the D minor Sonata as "drama, almost theatre, of the most impassioned sort". As the reviews cited above indicate, Schnabel's recording of the D minor sonata, made nearly two years earlier, was less well received. For Alec Robertson, "Schnabel rises to the full measure of the great Sonata in D minor, the first movement of which is full of superb rhythmic energy. But why on earth does he keep the sustaining pedal down throughout the two lovely recitatives in the middle of the movement? 'The poet speaks': but why this jangling utterance? I should be most interested to hear an explanation of this interpretive eccentricity. The adagio, as so often with this player, lacks tenderness and is too heavy: and personally I like the final movement to be less explosive than this. The phrasing and the rhythmic impulse in this wonderful movement are splendid, but I missed the effect of the lovely dissolving harmonies just before the last page." A quick glance at Schnabel's edition of the D minor Sonata score, with its copious pedal markings throughout the movement, answers some questions about his interpretation. In a footnote to a passage preceding the one Robertson refers to, Schnabel writes that the pedal must be used "fearlessly; a change of pedal would deprive these measures of their deep background, their innermost spirit".