Artur Schnabel’s 1945 New York Philharmonic broadcast of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto boasts outer movements full of stylish brio and virility and a Largo fashioned from long, arching phrases that transcend barlines. These qualities, however, are heard to stronger sonic and executional advantage via Schnabel’s 1933 studio version (type Q3575 in Search Reviews for my comments). What’s more, the Schnabel/Szell Beethoven Third sounds infinitely better via its official transfer in the New York Philharmonic’s “Historic Broadcasts” boxed set. Similarly, listeners familiar with Schnabel’s superbly timed and ideally characterized HMV studio traversal of Beethoven’s Op. 33 Bagatelles will find the present 1943 broadcast less pianistically poised and hampered by grungy sonics.
A 1946 Mozart K. 488 finds Schnabel off form: he rushes through passagework in a nervous, unsettled manner and suffers a major memory lapse toward the end of the Rondo. Unlike an earlier, noisier Music and Arts CD transfer of this broadcast, Urania preserves the very moment where Schnabel stopped playing in order to look at Rodzinski’s score and pick things up from a later point. No comparable disasters befall a 1941 Mozart K. 482 with Bruno Walter at the helm. Still, the hash-ridden sound, Walter’s blowzy, whipped-up tuttis, and occasionally flustered runs from Schnabel’s fingers relegate this performance to “specialists only” status–and ditto for everything else in this two-disc set. The booklet notes convey a few facts, a few errors, nothing about Schnabel’s aforementioned lapse, and plenty of hot air.
