A great classicist among pianists, as a composer Artur Schnabel was a restless modernist. This release on the CPO label should help prove that he also was a near-great one. Written during Schnabel’s productive last decade, the three works heard here are essentially atonal. The dense, canonic writing clearly derives from that of Schoenberg, but there are qualities that are unique to Schnabel among pre-World War 2 atonalists. Primary among them is an unexpectedly strong rhythmic drive. Where most music using this sort of chromatic vocabulary creates a feeling of loss and aimlessness, Schnabel’s music, even the slow parts, is always going somewhere. Adding to the music’s purposeful momentum is Schnabel’s finely judged sense of when to introduce a hint of a tonal center, so he can make the music head toward or away from it. This directional activity, even if ultimately frustrated, helps draw the listener through the tightly woven and very serious contrapuntal writing.
Each piece on the disc is for separate forces; only one player (cellist Helmut Menzler) appears in two of the chamber works. It must have taken formidable interpretive skills to go past the Schoenbergian surface to find the different expressive qualities inherent in these highly varied compositions. The lines of the chamber music are tightly interlocked; fortunately the Pellegrini Quartet and the Ravinia Trio prove themselves adept listeners, constantly responding to each other while producing exemplary playing. Benedikt Koehlen deals well with piano music that is relatively spare and less propulsive than either of the ensemble works, eschewing all elements of overt display. The engineering is first-rate. Even listeners normally turned off by the Schoenberg style might find themselves surprised by this music’s strong, flowing, forthright character.
