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Artur Schnabel
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The Early YearsBorn in Kunzendorf, a small suburb of Bielitz, Galicia, in the Silesian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Lipnik, Bielsko-Biala, Poland), Schnabel was the youngest of three children born to Isidor Schnabel, a textile merchant, and his wife Ernestine (née Labin). He had two sisters, Clara and Frieda..
The family moved to Vienna in 1884, when Schnabel was two. He began learning the piano at the age of four, when he took a spontaneous interest in his eldest sister Clara's piano lessons and his prodigious talent quickly became evident. At the age of six he began piano lessons under Professor Hans Schmitt of the Vienna Conservatory (today the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna).
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The Early YearsBorn in Kunzendorf, a small suburb of Bielitz, Galicia, in the Silesian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Lipnik, Bielsko-Biala, Poland), Schnabel was the youngest of three children born to Isidor Schnabel, a textile merchant, and his wife Ernestine (née Labin). He had two sisters, Clara and Frieda..
The family moved to Vienna in 1884, when Schnabel was two. He began learning the piano at the age of four, when he took a spontaneous interest in his eldest sister Clara's piano lessons and his prodigious talent quickly became evident. At the age of six he began piano lessons under Professor Hans Schmitt of the Vienna Conservatory (today the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna). At the age of nine, he was accepted as a pupil by the famous piano pedagogue Theodor Leschetizky.
The Berlin YearsSchnabel moved to Berlin in 1898, making his debut there with a concert at the Bechstein-Saal. Following World War I, Schnabel also toured widely, visiting the United States, Russia and England.
He gained initial fame thanks to orchestral concerts he gave under the conductor Artur Nikisch as well as playing in chamber music and accompanying his future wife, the contralto Therese Behr, in lieder.
In chamber music, he founded the Schnabel Trio with the violinist Alfred Wittenberg and the cellist Anton Hekking; they played together between 1902-04. In 1905, he formed a second Schnabel Trio with Carl Flesch (with whom he also played violin sonatas) and the cellist Jean Gérardy. In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, Gérardy (a Belgian) left the trio as he could no longer remain in Germany. He was replaced by Hugo Becker and this became the third Schnabel Trio.
Later, Schnabel also played as a quartet with violinist Bronislaw Huberman, composer/violist Paul Hindemith and the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky (with whom he also played and recorded cello sonatas). Schnabel also played with a number of other famous musicians including the violinist Joseph Szigeti and the cellists Pablo Casals and Pierre Fournier.
He was friends, and played, with the most distinguished conductors of the day, including Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, George Szell, Willem Mengelberg, and Sir Adrian Boult.
From 1925 Schnabel taught at the Berlin State Academy where his masterclasses brought him great renown. Among Schnabel’s many piano pupils were Clifford Curzon, Rudolf Firkusny, Adrian Aeschbacher, Lili Kraus, Leon Fleisher, Carlo Zecchi, Claude Frank, Leonard Shure, Alan Bush, Nancy Weir, Jascha Spivakovsky, Eunice Norton and radio personality Karl Haas.
The Later YearsSchnabel, a Jew, left Berlin in 1933 after the Nazi Party took control. He lived in England for a time while giving masterclasses at Tremezzo on Lake Como in Italy, before moving to America in 1939. In 1944, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. There he took a teaching post at the University of Michigan, returning to Europe at the end of World War II.
He continued to give concerts on both sides of the Atlantic until the end of his life, as well as composing and continuing to make records, although he was never very fond of the whole studio process. He died in Axenstein, Switzerland and was buried in Schwyz, Switzerland.
FamilySchnabel married Therese Behr in 1905. They had two sons, Karl Ulrich Schnabel (1909-2001) who also became a classical pianist and renowned piano teacher, and Stefan Schnabel (1912-99) who became a well regarded actor.
RepertoireSchnabel was best known for his devotion to the core German composers, especially the Viennese classics of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. He was also renowned for his playing of works by Brahms and Schumann. He also played and recorded works by Bach.
However, his repertoire was wider than that. During his young virtuosic years in Berlin, he played works by other composers including Liszt, Chopin and Weber. On his early American tours, he programmed works such as the Chopin Preludes and the Schumann Fantasy in C.. Among other works that he played, as recalled by those such as Claudio Arrau and Vladimir Horowitz who had heard Schnabel in the 1920s, were Chopin's E minor piano concerto and the B-flat minor piano sonata no.2, and Weber's Konzertstück and piano sonata no.2. Schnabel himself mentioned that he had played the Liszt piano sonata in B minor "very often", as well as the Liszt E-flat piano concerto.
It is not clear why Schnabel dropped those from his performing repertoire in the 1930s, after his final departure from Germany. He claimed that it was because he decided that he wanted to play only "music which is better than it could be performed". However, it has been suggested by some that "Schnabel, uprooted from his native heritage, may have been clinging to the great German composers in an attempt to keep his cultural origins alive".
Schnabel was known for championing the then-neglected sonatas of Schubert and, even more so, Beethoven, including his more challenging late works. While on a tour of Spain, Schnabel wrote to his wife saying that during a performance of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations he had begun to feel sorry for the audience. "I am the only person here who is enjoying this, and I get the money; they pay and have to suffer," he wrote. Schnabel did much to popularize Beethoven's music, making the first complete recording of the Sonatas, completing the set in 1935. This set of recordings has never been out of print, and is considered by many to be the touchstone of Beethoven sonata interpretations, though shortcomings in finger technique mar many performances of fast movements|adagio]] pianist"). He also recorded all the Beethoven piano concertos.
Schnabel as composerDespite his performing repertoire being concentrated largely on the works of Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart and Brahms, almost all of his own compositions (none of which are in the active repertoire) are atonal. (It is interesting, in this regard, to note that Schnabel was a close friend of Arnold Schoenberg, his Austrian-American compatriot, who was famous as a pioneering composer of atonal or twelve-tone music.)
They are "difficult", yet fascinating and complex works, and are marked by genuine originality of style. The composer, Ernst Krenek, has commented that they show signs of undoubted genius (see biography of Schnabel by Cesar Saerchinger). Schnabel's list of compositions eventually included three symphonies, a piano concerto and five string quartets amongst various smaller works.
In recent years, a number of his compositions (notably championed by the violinist, Paul Zukofsky) have been recorded and made available on CD, including three of his string quartets, the three symphonies, and piano sonata.
Further ReadingSchnabel's book My Life and Music (reprinted 1988; Mineola, NY: Dover Publications; ISBN 0-486-25571-9), is a mixture of autobiography and commentary on a variety of musical subjects.
Saerchinger,C. Artur Schnabel. London, 1957 (with disc.)
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