Artur Schnabel's recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas
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Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel was the first pianist to record all of Ludwig van Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas.[1] The recordings were made in Abbey Road Studios in London on a C. Bechstein grand piano[2] from 1932 to 1935,[3][4][5] seven years after electrical recording was invented.[4] Originally recorded on 78 rpm phonograph records for the His Master's Voice (HMV) label,[3] they have been reissued numerous times on LP and CD.[6]
In 1932, HMV launched the Beethoven Society (sometimes referred to as the Beethoven Sonata Society) whose objective was to issue recordings of Schnabel's recordings of the sonatas to advance subscribers.[7] Although Schnabel refused to make recordings for years, he agreed to take on the project. It began in January 1932, when the Sonata No. 31 in A♭ major (Op. 110) was the first to be successfully recorded.[8] The final recordings were made in November 1935, and the project culminated with Sonata No. 25 in G major (Op. 79).[9] The Beethoven Society began distributing Schnabel's recordings in March 1932, issuing 12 volumes through 1937.[6] Independently of the Beethoven Society series, Schnabel also recorded Sonata No. 30 in E major (Op. 109) and Sonata No. 32 in C minor (Op. 111) in 1942 for RCA Records,[10] and the first movement of Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor (Op. 27 No. 2) in 1947, which was never issued on record.[11]
The recordings continue to draw universal recognition and have received numerous honors. In 1937, Gramophone wrote: "To [his] technical mastery Schnabel adds and fuses an intensely intelligent, not merely 'intellectual' mind ... The result is a perfectly blended interpretation of the music as a spiritual expression and as a musical organism."[12] In 1986, Tim Page, writing in The New York Times, noted that Schnabel's "historic" recordings were "the standard by which all subsequent performances have been judged".[13] In 2014, William Robin of The New Yorker wrote that Schnabel "remains the eminent Beethoven interpreter on record".[14] The recordings were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975[15] and the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2018.[16]