Gerardo wrote:

>Well, i don't see any virtue in Arrau's Goldberg Variations recording,

Sorry, I was talking about him generally, I don't even know his G.
variations.

I agree with you:

>For my personal opinion,Arrau has had great performances,but a terrible
>ones too.

There was always a tension between A's wanting to 'get behind the notes'
and his feeling that he needed to follow the score exactly.  He could be
wonderful in big romantic works by people like Schumann and Brahms and
Liszt, but I don't often 'get' his approach in the classics like Beethoven
or Mozart.  Arrau was a strange customer in Beethoven:  he tended to follow
his dynamic and phrasing markings with a doggedness which could press the
life-blood out of those works where the markings were not specific enough
or where repeats were involved, but he tended to combine this with a desire
to press the music into an overall concept which could be diametrically
opposed to the indications in the score.  I'm thinking of the 'allegro con
brio', the pulsating energy of the Waldstein sonata's first movement, which
he turned into a gentle 'spring sonata'.  He tried to square the circle by
being completely faithful both to the letter and spirit of a score, but in
works that didn't suit his temperament the spirit could be wide off the
mark (your example of the Chopin Waltzes is a case in point).

>Well, i don't see any virtue in Arrau's Goldberg Variations recording,
>more than his arrogance to think the world should wait after the year
>2,000 to listen to that "revelation"

I don't think you're doing Arrau justice there.  I also don't think that he
cared what the critics would say about the recording.  Vanity or gimmicky
publick relations were definitely not in his character.  It's likely that
that recording was just forgotten in the archives.  Reputedly, when he
heard himself in it when it was discovered, he said, with surprise, that
perhaps Bach *can* be played well on the pianoforte.  He had given Bach up,
thinking you could only do him justice on the harpsichord.

Felix Delbruck
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