No keyboard aficionado would have difficulty in guessing, in a musical quiz, who this pianist is—and chiefly because of Arrau's exceptional depth of tone and predilection for leisurely tempo. It's good to have this digitally remastered, three-disc Schubert compilation in the Philips Arrau Edition at medium price. But prospective purchasers should remember that when recording these works between 1978 and 1982 Arrau was already in his middle and later seventies. Inevitably the Schubert he presents is a rather older composer than the one more usually encountered, who died at the age of 31.
Schubert was in fact almost ten years younger than that when writing the opening A major Sonata (D664), a radiant, spring-like work particularly memorable for its lyricism. Yet even in the first movement Arrau stresses the thinker behind the singer, bringing out early left-hand warnings of the brief octave outburst to come in the development. Both this movement and the Andante (taken slowly) are still a joy because they are so lovingly and tenderly, as well as searchingly, phrased. It is only in the dancing finale that he brings home the music's basic innocence. Everything else in the set dates from the composer's last two years, the first disc completed by the first four Impromptus and the brief C minor Allegretto. Here the Schubert we meet is certainly no mere drawing-room miniaturist. Again allowing himself plenty of time, he explores them in no less depth than the last three great sonatas. I've rarely heard the C minor Impromptu (No. 1) played with a more impressive quasi-orchestral fullness and tonal range.
Of those last three sonatas (the second disc is shared by the C minor and B flat major, while the third monopolized by the A major), my overriding impression was of ''emotion recollected in tranquillity'', as might be expected from a septuagenarian. Apart from some rather deliberate tempos (surely more deliberate than is good for their scherzo or menuetto movements), I did sometimes miss a certain necessary rhythmic alacrity and tension throughout—and not least in the challenging opening movements of the C minor and A major works. That said, how eloquently Arrau characterizes their contrasting subjects without the disruptive gear changes we're often given. The desolate minor-key slow movements of the A major and B flat Sonatas, in a very different way, seem insufficiently tautly timed (especially the reprise of the latter) to convey the full sharpness of their ache. Yet again, the depth of Arrau's sympathy with the composer in extremis is unmistakable. The finales bring some bold episodic contrast, particularly that of the B flat Sonata. But I wish he could have conveyed the emotional ambivalence of its recurrent main theme without such mannered rubato.
The engineers have done their best in remastering the tonal balance. But though always warmly mellow, the sonority is still (as it always was) too plummy and insufficiently translucent and clear-cut for this composer. In sum, then, not an outright winner; but a precious reminder of a great artist in the autumn of his life none the less.'