If you want Mozart’s piano sonatas served up with limpid grace, surface charm, consistently steady rhythms, elegant fingerwork and sparkle, you probably won’t like Claudio Arrau’s Philips cycle. I’ve always been drawn to these sessions, which for the most part transpired when Arrau was in his 80s. He takes each phrase seriously, and reads between the lines by way of emphatic accents and little rhetorical asides. Do these stem from eroding agility or dogged intention? In any event, this is confrontational Mozart, where an operatic sensibility informs every inflection, with each dissonance and passing-tone magnified. Not easy listening, in other words.
The sonic capabilities of the instruments of Mozart’s time pale next to the full-throated, burnished sonority and huge dynamic range that the veteran pianist still could coax from his Steinway. Arrau being Arrau, of course, all ornaments are played on the beat, and not one solitary repeat escapes unobserved. As I’ve often said about Arrau in other contexts, you can’t listen to him casually; you have to work with him side by side, plumbing the B minor Adagio for Brahmsian allusions (they’re there), or finding plausible tragic undertones that no one else has discovered in the K. 330, K. 279, K. 333, and K. 576 first movements.
Suaver yet no less serious hands unravel the C minor K. 475/457 Fantasy and Sonata’s Beethovenian time-scale in a 1973 recording that also produced like-minded interpretations of the A minor Rondo and D minor Fantasy.
Save for moments when Arrau’s fingernails appear to be clicking on the keys, Philips’ plush and detailed engineering still sounds pretty much state-of-the-art. Imagine both the flaws and the insights of Maria Callas’ best late-period work and you’ll understand why Arrau’s Mozart cycle is a law unto itself. Savor it in small doses, like bitter yet undeniably potent vintage spirits. Thanks to Arkivmusic.com’s on-demand reprint program for making these fascinating recordings available again.
