For its second Arrau volume Philips turns from a mix of the doughty and lightweight (Vol. 1, 10/98) to a diet of masterpieces. Here is the sort of programme Arrau so frequently offered during the 1960s and 1970s when his superhuman endeavour and achievement left his audience limp and ashen-faced with exhaustion: it was as if one had just witnessed Atlas holding the universe aloft. During that time he moved from marathon to marathon (the complete works of this or that great composer), straining every nerve and sinew as he reached towards the ultimate vision.
The fruits of Arrau’s Herculean commitment can be heard throughout these finely refurbished recordings dating from 1963-84. Few pianists have come to a more singular, instantly recognizable view of Beethoven, the lynchpin of Arrau’s daunting repertoire. Here, once more, is that autumnal, near elegiac Waldstein Sonata with its curiously italicized insights, its central Adagio molto more a lecture than a performance, its first movement more Allegro con tenebroso than Allegro con brio. For Horowitz (Arrau’s polar opposite) such heavily worn learning seemed ponderous and pedantic (‘He plays so slow, ugh!’), yet time and again, while Arrau can seem mannered or perverse in detail, the overall effect of his performance is overwhelming. Even when you wish he would allow the composer his own voice more easily or gracefully, you are compelled by the massive rhetoric and stature of his argument. In the Liszt Sonata his tone bulges awkwardly at the start of the central Andante sostenuto, and why so loud and hectoring when Liszt asks for a triple piano? His coda or epilogue with its strange, bumping rubato is, indeed, alive with glassy sighs and ghostly threats, and at the end you feel as if you have taken an immense, profoundly exploratory journey. Even in his early days Arrau was never one for musical small-talk; South American by birth he was German both by temperament and training. At the same time, few less hectoring, more eloquent Emperor Concertos exist, warmly and, indeed, unforgettably partnered by Sir Colin Davis, and this is arguably the crown of this extraordinary set of records. Courtly and distinguished, Arrau could castigate what he saw as irresponsibility and superficiality in others (‘some pianists … they play all lacy!’). Love him, hate him, puzzle over him, you cannot deny Arrau his unique calibre. Certainly, he was never a ‘lacy’ pianist.'