Arrau, Claudio

(b. 6 February 1903 in Chillán, Chile; d. 9 June 1991 in Miirzzuschlag, Austria), concert pianist who enjoyed an eight-decade career and who is widely regarded as one of the great musicians of the twentieth century.

One of three children, Arrau was the son of Carlos Arrau, an eye doctor, and Lucretia Leon. Arrau was one year old when his father died, and his mother began teaching piano in order to support the family. She kept her young son with her during lessons, and he quickly showed prodigious talents on the keyboard. Arrau made his public concert debut at age five in his hometown and a year later was performing in Chile’s capital, Santiago. He so impressed Chilean authorities that, when he was seven, his entire family was sent to Berlin so he could study with the greatest piano teachers. He did not receive formal academic schooling. In 1913 he began studying with Martin Krause, who became a father figure to the young pianist. A pupil of Franz Liszt and a well-known music critic, Krause was greatly impressed by Arrau, proclaiming him his favorite student and declaring he would be his “masterwork.”

In 1918 Krause died in the great flu epidemic, and Arrau was once again left fatherless. However, he continued working at the piano, winning the prestigious Liszt in 1919 and 1920. At age seventeen Arrau made his debut at London’s Royal Albert Hall as well as in Berlin with the Berlin Philharmonic, both great successes. On 20 October 1923, when he was twenty years old, he made his U.S. debut at Carnegie Hall as part of his first tour of America. The tour, however, was a failure; only five of the thirty planned dates actually materialized, and his Carnegie Hall debut was to a nearly empty house. Arrau returned to Berlin somewhat crestfallen and for a time stopped playing, suffering from depression. After several years of therapy, he returned to performing in the late 1920s. His career was greatly boosted in 1927 when he won the prestigious International Geneva Prize; among the judges was the renowned pianist Artur Rubinstein.

No longer a child prodigy, Arrau found it hard to compete with the many other virtuosos touring Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. In order to draw attention to himself, in 1935 he played the complete keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach in a series of twelve concerts in Berlin. The resulting publicity led him to tackle Mozart’s keyboard works the following year, and in 1938 he performed the first of many series in which he played all thirty-two of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. From 1924 to 1940 he was also a teacher at Berlin’s Stern Conservatory of Music. On 8 July 1937 he wed Ruth Schneider, with whom he had three children.

Leaving Berlin on the eve of World War II, Arrau returned to Chile, opening a piano school in its capital. However, he soon left the country because of his disillusionment with the Chilean government. He made his second Carnegie Hall appearance in February 1941, and this time his fame was such that he filled the hall. The concert was favorably reviewed and covered in the popular media. In 1942 Arrau played more than 100 concerts throughout the country. He decided to settle in the United States, although he did not become a naturalized citizen until 1979.

From the 1950s Arrau became an international superstar of the piano, traveling extensively and performing with major orchestras around the world. He was particularly beloved in his native Chile, where he was always warmly received. However, he refused to perform there once the Socialists took control of the government. In 1978, as a protest against the repressive Chilean regime then in power, he renounced his Chilean citizenship. As part of his eightieth birthday celebration, in 1984 he made a sentimental and hugely successful return to his homeland after more than a decade away. His concerts in Santiago, televised and covered widely in the press, became an event of intense national pride.

In his later years Arrau was much celebrated. Each notable birthday, beginning when he was in his seventies, was an occasion for awards, special recitals, new recordings, and gala events. He continued to perform into his eighties, maintaining a rigorous concert schedule. He died of a massive stroke while preparing for a recital that was to be held at the recently established Brahms museum in Austria. He is buried in Municipal Cemetery in Chillán.

Arrau was an influential interpreter of the great classical and Romantic repertoire. His many recordings include landmark renditions of Beethoven’s and Brahms’s piano concertos, Liszt’s twelve Transcendental Etudes, and Chopin’s complete works for piano and orchestra, many of which have continued to be available on CD. He was also a scholar of Beethoven’s works, producing an urtext edition of the piano sonatas that was published in 1978. The music critic Nicolas Slonimsky noted that his playing “combined a Classical purity and precision of style with a rhapsodicéclat.”

Ingo Harden, Claudio Arrau: Ein Interpretenportrait (1983), is a German-language interpretative biography. Two major Spanish-language biographies of Arrau, published in Chile, are Inés María Cardone, Claudio Arrau: Lo que nunca se dijo de su viaje a Chile (1984), and Sergio Dorantes Guzman, Arrau: El gran artista latinoamericano (1991). Joseph Horowitz, Conversations with Arrau (1982), is a book-length interview. The revised version is Arrau on Music and Performance (1999). An extended interview with Arrau is in David Dubai, Reflections from the Keyboard: The World of the Concert Pianist (1984; 2d ed. 1997). An extended critical work by Herbert Kupferberg appeared in Musical America (Mar. 1988). Obituaries are in the New York Times (10 June 1991) and London Times (11 June 1991).

Richard Carlin