Two for the Price of One

In Philadelphia's Robin Hood Dell last week, Chilean-born Pianist Claudio Arrau set some kind of record: he played both of Johannes Brahms's monumental piano concertos, Nos. 1 & 2, the longest two in the standard piano repertoire, all on one program. The audience liked it fine, and so did the critics.*

Claudio Arrau (rhymes with allow), who does such things with authoritative aplomb, is a trim, dapper 43-year-old who looks like a fugitive from a Man of Distinction ad. He likes to wear maroon ties with matching handkerchief jutting out of his coat pocket. Along with Bohemian-born Rudolf Serkin, he is in the middle generation of top pianists, a step below such artistic and box office champions as Vladimir Horowitz, Artur Schnabel and Artur Rubinstein, and a step above such youngsters as Eugene List, William Kapell and Eugene Istomin. He is one of the most tireless of them all.

In the past six seasons he has played 380 concerts, and in so doing has not simply repeated old warhorses. His huge repertoire includes all the piano works of Bach, all of Mozart's solo pieces and 21 piano concertos, all of Beethoven's sonatas and five piano concertos, and Schubert's sonatas. Schumann and Debussy are still to go, but not Liszt. Says he: "There is not enough good Liszt . . . too many things are bad."

In June, on his 14th tour of South America, he drew 25,000 persons in an open-air sports arena, the largest crowd ever to assemble for a concert in Buenos Aires. South American women fill his dressing room with flowers, but North American women are not so demonstrative, Said Arrau: "They are very far away. It is very difficult to make them become earthly."

Boy Wonder. Arrau had taught himself to read music at four, played his first recital at five without even taking a lesson. At seven, the Chilean Government paid his way to Europe for ten years' study. He was no sensation on his first U.S. visit in 1923. He stayed away until 1941, when a brilliant Carnegie Hall recital turned the trick. Since then he has been so busy that his wife and two young children rarely see him.

Putting two Brahms concertos on one program started as a gag last winter between Arrau and Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, who directed the Robin Hood Dell Orchestra for the concert last week. At intermission, Arrau gulped down gobs of milk, afterwards wolfed a big steak. Said he: "It turned out not just a joke." This week, after hopping up to the Berkshires for a concert at Tanglewood, and to Manhattan for a Lewisohn Stadium appearance, he will take his first vacation in five years.

*An even greater feat was attempted in Carnegie Hall in 1924 by a double threat musician named Paul Stassevitch, who fiddled through Brahms's Violin Concerto in D Major, then shifted to the keyboard for Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor. The critics shuddered.

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