Artur Schnabel
Artur Schnabel (1882-1951) was a notable Jewish-Austrian pianist, composer, and music educator, widely recognized for his intellectual approach to piano performance and interpretation. Born in a Jewish family, he began his musical education in Vienna before moving to Berlin, where he developed a significant career as a concert pianist and educator. Schnabel was particularly famed for his focus on the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert, challenging conventional concert programming by presenting abstract and lengthy recitals. He made history as the first artist to record all of Beethoven's piano sonatas, a monumental achievement that continues to be respected today.
In addition to his performing career, Schnabel was also an accomplished editor, producing notable editions of classical piano works that provided detailed interpretive guidance for performers. His commitment to teaching was profound, influencing a generation of pianists through his master classes and lectures. Despite facing challenges due to his Jewish heritage during the rise of the Nazi regime, Schnabel's legacy endures through his recordings, compositions, and the success of his students, who continue to uphold his musical philosophy. His life and work illustrate a deep dedication to elevating the piano recital to an art form that emphasizes both intellectual engagement and emotional depth.
Artur Schnabel
Pianist
- Born: April 17, 1882
- Birthplace: Kunzendorf, Moravia, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Lipnik, Poland)
- Died: August 15, 1951
- Place of death: Axenstein, Switzerland
Austrian American classical composer and pianist
Renowned for his pioneering and sensitive interpretations of the piano music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Schnabel bequeathed his musical approaches to generations of students. His legendary interpretations have been documented through his recordings and his editions of the Beethoven piano sonatas.
The Life
Artur Schnabel (AHR-tur SHNAH-behl) was born to Jewish parents of Austrian descent. When Schnabel was seven years old, his family moved to Vienna, where he commenced performance studies with Hans Schmitt at the Vienna Conservatory and later with Theodor Leschetizky. During the same period, he engaged in theory studies with Eusebius Mandyczewski, a mentor who permitted Schnabel access to important musical manuscripts in Vienna’s archives, thus laying the groundwork for Schnabel’s future editorial endeavors.
Schnabel moved to Berlin in 1900, and in 1905 he married the singer Therese Behr. The couple had two sons: Karl Ulrich Schnabel (a pianist who would later perform in a duo with his father) and Stefan Schnabel (a television and film actor). Behr and Schnabel were frequent musical collaborators in recital—a pairing that reached its height with a series of all-Schubert recitals given in Berlin in 1928. He published his editions of the Beethoven piano sonatas from 1924 to 1927 and gave his first complete cycle of all the Beethoven sonatas in Berlin on seven consecutive Sundays in 1927. He taught at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik from 1925 until 1933, when the rise of the Nazi regime prompted him to move for a time to Switzerland.
In the 1930’s Schnabel made extensive performance tours of the United States and Europe, gaining an international reputation as a recitalist and an ever-growing group of devotees. In the same decade he was contracted by the HMV (His Master’s Voice) recording label in London and became the first person to record all the Beethoven piano sonatas on gramophone.
In 1939 he left Switzerland for the United States, where he taught a performance class at the University of Michigan from 1940 to 1945. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944. At the University of Chicago in 1945 he gave a famous series of lectures, the transcripts of which are reproduced in the book My Life and Music. Although he continued to concertize regularly in his late years, poor health drove him to return to Switzerland in 1951. A bout of uremia exacerbated an existing heart condition, and he died in the Grand Hotel in Axenstein on August 15, 1951.
The Music
Schnabel’s musical career is notably varied: He is remembered foremost as the pianist who intellectualized the piano recital. By concentrating on the repertoire of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert, he challenged audiences with abstract and lengthy programs. Beyond his pianistic achievements, Schnabel edited a number of performing editions of the works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Johannes Brahms. Although he was a composer for most of his life, his considerable corpus of original compositions remains undiscovered by most listeners today.
Early Years. Schnabel’s youthful studies with Schmitt and Leschetizky formed the basis of his technical and interpretive approach to piano playing. As was customary for students of Leschetizky, Schnabel first studied with Annette Essipoff (Leschetizky’s wife) and with Malwine Brée (his assistant) to lay technical groundwork. When Schnabel eventually took lessons directly from the master, Leschetizky forewent the usually curriculum of virtuoso concert pieces and instead encouraged Schnabel to seek out the neglected piano sonatas of Schubert. Schnabel was a frequent fixture in the Leschetizky master classes, where he was called upon at most of the gatherings to demonstrate the correct manner in which to play. Schnabel gave his Viennese debut recital on February 12, 1897. The program, which included works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Beethoven, also included virtuoso pieces by Moritz Moszkowski and Leschetizky himself, in accordance with Viennese taste.
The Berlin Years. Schnabel’s years in Berlin were some of his most musically fruitful. During this time Schnabel collaborated with such musical luminaries as composer and conductor Richard Strauss, pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni, and violinist Carl Flesch, with whom Schnabel prepared editions of the violin sonatas of Mozart and Brahms. He formed a piano trio with violinist Alfred Wittenberg and cellist Anton Hekking. Although the members of the group changed over the years, Schnabel’s chamber music concerts remained popular events in Berlin.
Schnabel made serious efforts in composition during this time, producing a number of works for piano solo and his first string quartets. Schnabel’s compositional style was decidedly modern, inspired by the atonal trends being championed by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg. Interestingly, although Schnabel played the new musical works of his contemporaries, he did not promote his own compositions in performance, nor did he record his works.
Beethoven. Schnabel’s serious study of Beethoven began in the 1920’s, when he was approached to produce a new edition of the piano sonatas. For this project, Schnabel had access to the scholarly complete edition of Beethoven’s works, as well as the manuscripts housed in the Prussian State Library in Berlin. Originally published separately from 1924 to 1927, Schnabel’s edition of the sonatas was reissued in two volumes by Simon & Schuster in the United States, Oxford University Press in England, and Edizioni Curci in Italy. Schnabel’s editorial work was aimed directly at the performer. His copious instructions to the pianist (including fingerings, tempo indications, pedaling instructions, musical analysis, and explanatory footnotes) were attempts to clarify the essence of Beethoven’s music. While Schnabel never advocated strict adherence to his own editorial markings, he intended them as a guide for others who sought a thoughtful and musical approach to the performance of these works.
The publishing project ended in 1927, the centenary year of the death of Beethoven. To mark the occasion, Schnabel presented in Berlin his first complete cycle of all thirty-two Beethoven sonatas. Schnabel did not perform the sonatas chronologically but rather in an order that made aesthetic sense—and one that he repeated in his cycles of concerts in New York and London. Schnabel’s all-Beethoven events were a notable artistic undertaking at the time, given that concerts tended to showcase variety and virtuosity.
In the 1930’s, Schnabel made his landmark recordings of all thirty-two Beethoven piano sonatas and the five concerti for the HMV label in London. Schnabel found this an arduous process. In the days prior to splicing and editing, a mistake meant rerecording an entire movement (or approving the recording with errors), and Schnabel doubted that the electronic process could truly capture his musical intentions. Despite Schnabel’s initial misgivings, at the time of their release these landmark recordings sold at a rapid pace. Offering them to the public on a subscription basis, HMV had sold more than $500,000 worth of the records by 1939. With their recent reissue on compact disc, they remain pioneering and iconic interpretations.
Teaching and Composition. Increasingly, Schnabel turned to teaching in his later years. He taught classes on Lake Como in Italy during the summers. While living in New York, he kept a small studio. As a teacher in the grand master-class tradition, Schnabel rarely gave private lessons—it was common for two or three students to observe a typical two-hour lesson. His courses at the University of Michigan included only a handful of students but a large number of observers. His teaching focused on interpretive and musical issues; technique was addressed only if it served a particular musical aim. Among his students were Leonard Shure, Leon Fleischer, Clifford Curzon, and Claude Frank. Schnabel’s students have become internationally renowned pedagogues themselves, ensuring that Schnabel’s teachings live on through his musical lineage.
In composition Schnabel turned to larger musical structures even as he maintained his abstract compositional style. His first symphony was written in the late 1930’s, but it did not receive a premiere until 1947 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Notably, Schnabel completed two other symphonies, a rhapsody for orchestra, and works for piano solo and chamber ensembles in the last decade of his life. Composer Roger Sessions referred to Schnabel’s act of composition as “a vital avocation, one into which, to be sure, he was able to pour all the resources of his tremendous gift of expression, his unsurpassed musicality, his inexhaustibly live imagination.”
Musical Legacy
By eschewing standard virtuoso fare and programming the music of composers such as Beethoven and Schubert, Schnabel advanced the notion of the piano recital as an artistic and intellectual event. Schnabel was fond of saying that he performed only music that was better than it could be played. Critics of his playing pointed to his inaccuracies in performance and claimed that he lacked sufficient technical apparatus; proponents of his playing praised his consummate lyricism and his rhythmic verve. His legion of pupils continued teaching in the tradition of Schnabel, keeping his musical legacy alive today.
Although his compositional output goes nearly unnoticed today, Schnabel remained a serious composer throughout his life, leaving a sizable body of work. His career as a composer was complemented by his activities as a musical editor. Over the years, his editorial work has been criticized for distorting the original compositions and overromanticizing the classic musical tradition; however, his editions of the Beethoven sonatas remain a crystallization of his individual approach to interpretation and are still in wide circulation among musicians today.
Schnabel’s extensive recorded legacy is unique among pianists of his generation. His complete Beethoven cycles (in recital and on record) were marvels of their time. Since the time of Schnabel, numerous artists have duplicated his feat of recording all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. While the newer recordings can attest flawless accuracy and digitally enhanced sound, Schnabel’s recordings from the 1930’s remain important historic performances and artifacts of revered status.
Principal Works
choral works:Dance and Secret, 1944 (for chorus and orchestra); Joy and Peace, 1944 (for chorus and orchestra).
orchestral works: Symphony No. 1, 1938; Symphony No. 2, 1943; Symphony No. 3, 1949.
piano works:Dance Suite, 1921; Stück, 1936 (Piece; composed of seven movements).
Principal Recordings
albums:Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas, 1933-1935 (released on some two hundred sides of 78-rpm records).
writings of interest:Reflections on Music, 1933; Music and the Line of Most Resistance, 1942; My Life and Music, 1988.
Bibliography
Beethoven, Ludwig van. Thirty-two Sonatas for the Pianoforte. 2 vols. Edited by Artur Schnabel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1935. Schnabel’s views as a performer and interpreter of Beethoven are encapsulated in his edition of Beethoven’s sonatas for solo piano.
Saerchinger, César. Artur Schnabel: A Biography. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1957. The most complete biography of Schnabel in English, with lists of Schnabel’s recital programs and his compositions and discography.
Schnabel, Artur. My Life and Music. New York: Dover, 1988. Fascinating and engaging transcripts from the autobiographical talks Schnabel gave at the University of Chicago in 1945. Reproduced in this edition is the speech given by Schnabel in Manchester, England, on the occasion of receiving his honorary doctorate from that institution. Includes twenty black-and-white photographs.
Schonberg, Harold C. “The Man Who Invented Beethoven.” In The Great Pianists: From Mozart to the Present. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. The long-standing music critic of The New York Times offers his opinions on Schnabel’s Beethoven recitals and recordings.
Teachout, Terry. “The Great Schnabel.” Commentary (May, 2007): 61-64. The music critic for The Wall Street Journal discusses Schnabel’s recorded output and its legacy.
Wolff, Konrad. Schnabel’s Interpretation of Piano Music. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. A Schnabel student recounts his teacher’s specific technical and interpretive teachings. Includes an account of Schnabel’s lessons and a foreword by pianist Alfred Brendel.