Previously unreleased.

Arrau was in his late fifties when he gave these performances; yet he had decades in front of him, too. The music of the Romantics was in his blood, and programs from 1933/34 reproduced in Joseph Horowitz’s book Conversations with Arrau reveal, for example, the Chopin B flat minor Sonata nestling between Beethoven and Ravel; Schumann, Liszt, Beethoven and Schubert all figure largely in those recitals. That the music on this present disc is music close to Arrau’s heart is an understatement. Both these concertos are ideal vehicles for Arrau’s insightful way with the music he chose to deliver to a grateful public. Pianists will appreciate his true technique – technique not in terms of velocity but in terms of tone production, pedalling (he always used little pedal, a condiment rather than a vital ingredient in the recipe) and, most of all, legato. Musicians of all heritages will respond to his deeply-ingrained sense of service to the music he plays.