Arrau Back This Month

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31774, 3 September 1968, Page 12

Arrau Back This Month

Claudio Arrau, who will give a Christchurch solo concert in the Civic Theatre on September 17, has the kind of life story from which legends are created.

When he first became an international figure he was known as a mysterious South American brought up in Berlin who had been able to read a Beethoven sonata at the age of four and who now had the capacity to play anything at sight and be at home in any period of music from Bach to Bartok.

Today, the French refer to Arrau as “Le Maitre” and the French Government bestowed upon him the title of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, an honour reserved usually for creative artists, after Paris had given him a standing ovation for his performance of Schubert.

In Warsaw, where he returned to play after an absence of 25 years, the Poles gave him some of their most precious musical gifts: the mask of Chopin, a cast of Chopin’s hand and facsimile manuscripts—although Arrau had been playing Beethoven. Although Arrau hates labels, he is considered possibly the finest interpreter of Beethoven in the world today. His all-Beethoven recitals are a regular feature of the world’s great concert halls and he recently recorded all five Beethoven concertos for the

second time. At the 1970 Beethoven Festival in Bonn Arrau will give the first performance in modern times of a recently rediscovered Beethoven sonata. This will be the great pianist’s second visit to New Zealand—he toured here in 1962—and he has combined this trip to the Pacific area with tours of Australia and Japan.

In his Christchurch recital, Claudio Arrau will play a Beethoven first half

—the Eroica Variations and the Opus 110 Sonata—and music by Liszt and Schumann.