The pianist abandoned Bach for Beethoven, Liszt and Schumann — but at what cost? New York , early The pianist Claudio Arrau was thirty-nine and after seven early wunderkind years in his native Chile and twenty-two formative years in Germany, he had just arrived in the United States via a South American tour.
He was already on the verge of stardom, on his way to becoming one of the piano titans of the twentieth century. The United States fascinated Arrau, and even more fascinating to him was success in the United States. Now what if Claudio Arrau had recorded the Goldberg Variations that year, , the first to do so on the piano, thirteen years before Glenn Gould and his recording that changed the course of the Bach-on-Piano and Bach in general?
We also know what happened to the Goldberg Variations , which moved out of relative obscurity to become the recital and recording favorites they are today. It was the only way. Time , He recorded it in , for RCA. So why do we not know Arrau as a Bach pioneer, perhaps even as a rabble-rouser or at least a boundary-pusher?
The recording did not get released until , almost half a century later. Which begs the question: what happened? Numerous causes contributed to the delay.
Allegedly, he was even thinking about taking up the harpsichord, just to get back to Bach but feel legitimate about it. It was a natural choice. Arrau had won fame as a Bach exponent. But as fate would have it, it was never released. To reestablish the reputation she had gained in America in and for much-needed funds, she gave a New York concert devoted to the Goldberg Variations.
