[USED:Cond.B] Arrau.3 Great Pianists

Call him a thinking person's virtuoso. The very antithesis of flash, Chilean-born, German-trained pianist Claudio Arrau was celebrated for his taste and refinement, the breadth of his repertoire and the finish of his playing. Not that he couldn't air it out, listen to the Liszt 'Vallee d'Obermann' or some of the fleeter Chopin Preludes and you'll hear dexterity in the service of romantic fervor, but the intoxication seems to speak more of brandy than new wine, the art of an aristocrat, savored and well-considered. Indeed, his set of the Preludes "reads" like a novel, conceived as one grand span rather than a series of vignettes, and his Debussy 'Images' seem to look right past the visual "surface" of the action in search of philosophical truths that may lie below.
REVIEWS:
New York Times (5/28/00, p. 31) - "A performance like [Arrau's] of the Chopin Preludes does not sound like any Chopin the composer might have imagined...The dark opulence of Arrau's tonal palette and the 10-fingered breadth of articulation forge a tragedy of epic proportions..."