Die ZEIT No. 8,  Feb. 17, 2005  "You Are a Musician"

“You will never be a pianist.” Such a sentence has been spoken by many a piano teacher to his student. Often, rightly so. But Theodor Leschetizky, the indisputable heir to Carl Czerny and the true grandfather of modern pianistic technique, added one sentence more when he addressed Artur Schnabel, one of his hundreds (and the most talented) of students: “You will never be a pianist. You are a musician.” Now that is something different.

Artur Schnabel (b. 1882 in Lipnik, Austria, d. 1951 in Morschach, Switzerland) was an original; not just a soloist at the piano, but also in the way he led his life. In behavior a bohemian, in aspiration an ascetic, one who did not play it safe to avoid mistakes, but risked everything for the sake of expression. In his performances of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, he wrote the history of interpretation even though his recordings from the 30’s and 40’s, by today’s standards, are full of inaccuracies.

As pianist a legend, as composer he is still largely unknown. Perhaps because he didn’t make a fuss about his pieces. “I never perform my own compositions for, once I’ve finished a piece, I feel the desire to begin the next one. I can’t spend time practicing my own compositions. They are not very easy to play. I hardly know them.” Benedikt Koehlen, though, is a pianist who knows them and has made a brilliant recording of the Seven Pieces für Klavier from 1946. These belong to the mature works, with very austere, often only two-voiced structures that have done away with everything ornamental, winding their way through musical space with rhythmic terseness. Schnabel knows how to bend phrases boldly into the sky and back again. He obtains tension and release effects from freely flowing tonal-melodic power lines, without being dependent upon traditional harmony.

As evidenced in the Piano Trio (1945), performed by the Ravinia Trio, and the String Quartet No. 5 (1940), the way he allows each instrument to act very much independently, is completely modern. Schnabel developed a totally unique tonal language that clearly shows his narrative talent. He does not reject strict organization (he can write twelve-tone music without anyone noticing), but at the same time, unfettered musical progress is always in the foreground of his music. He never repeats himself, his phrases often sound as if they have been created that moment.

Once asked why, as a pianist, he performed such conservative programs and as composer he embraced modernism so uncompromisingly, he answered: “Have I told you the story about that colleague of mine, a famous conductor who, terribly furious about one of my compositions, burst into the artists’ dressing room and, gesturing wildly, screamed at me in front of a crowd of people: “Either you lie when you play, or you lie when you compose!” I responded: “Calm down, I’m lying at both.”

In his autobiography, which cannot be recommended strongly enough (“You Will Never Be a Pianist”, Wolke Verlag), Artur Schnabel recounts this anecdote. The book bears witness – in all honesty – just like Schnabel’s music, to a sincere and free spirit.

-- Frank Hilberg