Composer-performers tend to programme their own music at the first opportunity, but Artur Schnabel was different. He felt that every music student should compose – only then could one’s own imaginative world be free to find its fullest expression in revivifying the music of others; he nevertheless refrained from playing his own piano works in public. I attempted to give some idea of his uncompromising compositional stance when discussing Paul Zukofsky’s recording of the Second Symphony (Musical Observations, 9/92). And I’m sure that anyone fascinated by that work will want to explore Benedikt Koehlen’s new disc.
Of the two works recorded here, the Piano Sonata is the tougher nut to crack. Eduard Erdmann gave the first public performance in La Fenice in 1925 and SP’s note relates how Toscanini enquired, on meeting Schnabel for the first time, “Tell me, are you really the Schnabel who wrote that terrible piece I heard in Venice?”. Schoenberg is the most obvious influence, but Schnabel’s non-repetitive, continuously developing expressionistic sprawl is largely unenlivened by memorable ideas. Which, one suspects, is quite deliberate. Dating from 1936, the Piano Piece in Seven Movements is less exploratory in style – there are suggestions of Hindemith and even Debussy or Prokofiev in the lighter-textured writing – and here the structure does seem designed to be grasped by the listener. Schnabel’s compositions make considerable demands on his executants too, and Koehlen is not found wanting: his piano sounds just a little thin tonally but this may be the effect of the recording.'