My favorite Arrau recording is the one he did in the 1960s of Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto with Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Always preferred the 4th over the better known Emperor Concerto and nobody brought it to life like Arrau. His Liszt recordings are undeniably outstanding, but my favorite Liszt interpreter is Kentner.

Arrau's Liszt Sonata del Petrarca 123 is exquisite. Arrau had the unique ability to make his music sound profound.

I couldn't agree more. Arrau treats the pieces with the respect they deserve and thus makes you realise what masterpieces they are. I have never tired of this recording even though I bought my first copy forty five years ago.

I totally agree, this recording is much more than a show, but music of extreme virtuosity performed with excellent taste and emotional and musical control

Wonderful, thank you for featuring Claudio Arrau. Noble is the perfect word for him. I would pick his Brahms first piano concerto with Haitink on Philips. To me the greatest recording of the most thrilling classical music piece. Nothing comes close for me.

I would choose Beethoven last piano sonatas. No one played them like Arrau.

Tough choice for Arrau. On the Liszt side, the Sonata is also a contender. While the sonata is one of the monuments of piano literature , and while it is the highest expression of his compositional architecture and narrative genius it is a summation of the classical sonata. So it is backwards looking whereas the etudes are a bold statement of romanticism Arrau’s late Beethoven sonatas are also contenders. But I agree with this choice because of the range of works in the etudes and because so many people don’t get Liszt

I'd choose Arrau's Chopin Nocturnes instead of the Liszt, because they are totally unique in their approach.

i cannot agree more with you on this comments. that Arrau's recording is more than exceptional, it has all the elements of music, from tenderness to fury, with so many moments in which the "atmosphere" of the performance and the recording makes magic

Agree about the choice of Liszt as the composer with whom Arrau had a close connection (he studied with Martin Krause, one of Liszt’s pupils). But I’d have picked up the B minor sonata: undert his fingers the sonata is weightier and more profound than all rivals, and you listen to him playing it and think not what a great performance but what an incredible composition!

You're really helping my musical education, I can't find some of the recordings you recommend but can listen to others....I love the details of the composers' lives too ....

Funny, when I saw the topic I immediately thought of the Liszt Sonata which is my touchstone for that work and a piece I would place above the Transcendental Etudes, as much as I enjoy them. I remember the Arrau performance of the Sonata was your top pick so we're probably not far off.

For Walter Gieseking I guess his recordings of Debussy's works for piano and if we are narrowing it down for Kankrasanz the Suite Bergamasque should keep him at bay.

Barring a couple of private recordings, I'm an Arrau completionist as far as music collections go ... Arrau's recording of Liszt's "Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude" is one of the very few performances that I could hear for eternity and--a thousand years later, and later still--feel like it was Heaven rather than Hell. That is THE ONE from Arrau in my book.

If I Could Choose Only One Recording By... Gunter Wand Brahms Symphony No 3, NDR Symphony Orchestra, RCA My favorite recording of my favorite Brahms Symphony.

claudio arrau....for me my best recording of his remains the 24 preludes of chopin on phillips...lively, made with a lot of character for each piece, made without glamour, a recording that I would take to a desert island. ....and by the way, anecdote reported by the critic Claude Gingras who interviewed Claudio Arrau passing through Montreal...._mr Arrau the rachmaninoff repertoire is absent as far as you are concerned.....? ....:-rachmaninoff...????? he only wrote music for piano bar...._ but mr arrau did you know that he had composed symphonies....?...._ symphonies....????? ?

Hi Dave, thanks for this great new series! As you continue could you put a list of the recordings you’ve mentioned so far in the description? I’m going to make an Apple Music playlist of these recordings 😊

Can't wait for the next one 🤓

I like that Dave is our mortal Earthly representative in the Court of Cancrizans. Our guy knows how to play the long con and wear down that capricious Being.

Yes, this recording is one of the absolute highlights in the Stereo Years 50-disc Philips cube. I still hope that you will review these box sets some day! - Or here is a disturbing thought: Could it be that you actually don´t have these boxes because you are too serious a collector to bother with such more or less random stuff?

It was Liszt’s birthday yesterday fun fact.

Oh, that would be difficult. He recorded extensively and I could listen to ANYTHING that he performed with cofidence. Someone might do something better in the repertory, but nobody does everything as well. (Rubinstein, Kempff, Serkin, Gilels, Lupu, Ashkenazy, Gieseking, Pollini, Brendel). Did these do Liszt's magnificent Transcendental Etudes? This is the definitive recording of this work. About everything that he performed has some competent competition. This is a great collection of works, one that I respect (much that Liszt wrote was Kitsch. This isn't).

Arrau's Liszt Etudes are second to none. He is one of the few pianists who gets 'Feux Follets' right - a depiction of the 'Irrlicht', the will of the whisp as depicted in Central European mythology, where they are regarded as the lost souls of children who died before baptism. Almost every other pianist whose recordings I have heard treats it like it's some Satan-inspired Paganini-esque showpiece, which means that it loses any connection to its programmatic content.

I waiting for your Simon Rattle….I’m assuming it will be a Szymanowski recording

Many thanks, Dave, for another fun series. Just catching up with it today. Arrau ennobled everything he touched, not least Liszt. Cancrizans wil be happy with your choice. Ditto Munch's "Fantastique." Two suggestions for an offering to the dark god: Sir Adrian Boult's recording of Vaughan Williams's "Job," and Martha Argerich's recording of Rach 3 with Chailly and the RCO. As for Boult, I dislike the fact that he is often typecast as a British "specialist." His sympathies went far further. However, he is rightly remembered for his Elgar and Vaughan Williams. He knew both composers and his recordings of both have a special authority. His RVW "Job" is still the reference recording. As for Argerich, who has given us such a thrilling (live!) account of Rach 3? Juja Wang's recent live outing with Dudamel pales by comparison.