SCHNABEL Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas and more - PABX006

The legendary Schnabel Beethoven series starts here

"They embody what may well prove to be the sonically finest transfer
that these recordings from the 1930s have received" Fanfare

Artur Schnabel's 1930s Beethoven Sonata recordings are not a remastering project to be undertaken lightly. There are of course many other transfers already available, and I have held off beginning this series for a number of years, until I could be confident not just of repeating the previous efforts of my colleagues, but of achieving something dramatically new and substantial to the recordings through Pristine's 32-bit XR remastering process.

This is a project which has been started and abandoned several times before in my efforts to produce the very finest, most authentic piano tone, with as clean and quiet a background as possible. This I believe I have finally achieved here, and it is only in the occasional side or short section that one is reminded that these recordings were made nearly 80 years ago. My hope is that the much increased clarity, fidelity and realism of these Pristine releases will allow the listener a far greater appreciation of Schnabel's genius than ever before - and that you will forget the vintage of the recording and matters of sound quality and enjoy these legendary recordings as if hearing them for the very first time.

Andrew Rose

The legendary Schnabel Beethoven series continues

"They embody what may well prove to be the sonically finest transfer
that these recordings from the 1930s have received" Fanfare

Artur Schnabel's 1930s Beethoven Sonata recordings are not a remastering project to be undertaken lightly. There are of course many other transfers already available, and I have held off beginning this series for a number of years, until I could be confident not just of repeating the previous efforts of my colleagues, but of achieving something dramatically new and substantial to the recordings through Pristine's 32-bit XR remastering process.

This is a project which has been started and abandoned several times before in my efforts to produce the very finest, most authentic piano tone, with as clean and quiet a background as possible. This I believe I have finally achieved here, and it is only in the occasional side or short section that one is reminded that these recordings were made nearly 80 years ago. My hope is that the much increased clarity, fidelity and realism of these Pristine releases will allow the listener a far greater appreciation of Schnabel's genius than ever before - and that you will forget the vintage of the recording and matters of sound quality and enjoy these legendary recordings as if hearing them for the very first time.

Andrew Rose

The legendary Schnabel Beethoven series continues

"They embody what may well prove to be the sonically finest transfer
that these recordings from the 1930s have received" Fanfare

Artur Schnabel's 1930s Beethoven Sonata recordings are not a remastering project to be undertaken lightly. There are of course many other transfers already available, and I have held off beginning this series for a number of years, until I could be confident not just of repeating the previous efforts of my colleagues, but of achieving something dramatically new and substantial to the recordings through Pristine's 32-bit XR remastering process.

This is a project which has been started and abandoned several times before in my efforts to produce the very finest, most authentic piano tone, with as clean and quiet a background as possible. This I believe I have finally achieved here, and it is only in the occasional side or short section that one is reminded that these recordings were made nearly 80 years ago. My hope is that the much increased clarity, fidelity and realism of these Pristine releases will allow the listener a far greater appreciation of Schnabel's genius than ever before - and that you will forget the vintage of the recording and matters of sound quality and enjoy these legendary recordings as if hearing them for the very first time.

This release marks the commercial debut globally for a remarkable new technology from German company Celemony which aims to reduce or eliminate wow and flutter from analogue recordings. Certainly here it's had a great effect on Schnabel's piano tone, creating a much better sense than ever before of a very real instrument being played, one that was crafted very solidly out of heavy wood and metal! Pitch aside, the sonic results achieved in this third volume offer some indication of the variable nature of both pressings and recording quality in a series which spanned some 3 years of recording and 5 years of releases in the 1930s, and it will probably be clear to the listener that some sides were more troublesome than others. At all times my priority has been the tone of Schnabel's piano, and in places this has resulted in a degree of background "shash" remaining audible, despite my best efforts.

Andrew Rose

The legendary Schnabel Beethoven series continues

"They embody what may well prove to be the sonically finest transfer
that these recordings from the 1930s have received" Fanfare

Volume Three of this series marked the first commercial use of new software designed to deal with wow and flutter in mechanical recordings. It was a collaborative effort between myself and Mathis Nitschke of Celemony in Germany - restoration work was already underway and these files were sent to Mathis for treatment, before I was able to continue remastering. Since then I have "straightened out" Volumes One and Two from their final masters.

This fourth volume, however, marks the first in which the new pitch stabilisation process has commenced in what is probably its rightful place: at the beginning. In theory this should result in more accurate XR re-equalisation than ever possible before, though I strongly doubt whether any improvement would be such that it would be easily audible. But what this fourth volume has also benefited from is a general overall improvement in source quality over the third, and it is this - more than the precise point at which "Capstan" technology was applied - which has contributed most to the results heard here.

Of the three sonatas in this volume, it was the last-recorded, No. 12, which gave the most trouble as a consequence of greater surface "shash", but in the run of things all three were remarkably good and have produced a volume of which I'm particularly pleased and proud.

Andrew Rose

The legendary Schnabel Beethoven series continues

"They embody what may well prove to be the sonically finest transfer
that these recordings from the 1930s have received" Fanfare

This set of sonatas has presented one of the greater challenges in the series so far, with the difficulty of reconciling the sensitivity and gentleness Schnabel brings to one of the most famous sonata movements in the classical repertoire - the first movement of No. 14 which inspired the "Moonlight" epithet in 1932 from the music critic Ludwig Rellstab, who compared it to real moonlight shining upon Lake Lucerne - with the recording of it.

The problem here was of excessive surface noise. Recorded the day before the second and third movements, it seems years apart from them in technical terms, and took up much of the overall remastering time in my efforts to reduce background noise as much as possible without harming the music, such that it could be finally brought into the foreground and heard properly and clearly, something only now possible to this degree with new restoration tools unavailable to my predecessors, thanks to the onward march of digital remastering technology.

Thereafter the restoration of each movement went ahead reasonably smoothly. Except for some exceptionally quiet, single note passages, the pitch stability achieved using Capstan software on Schnabel's Bechstein is astounding, and only occasionally does a slight surface noise "fuzz" remind the listener of the vintage of these exceptional recordings.

Andrew Rose

The legendary Schnabel Beethoven series continues

"The sound quality ... made me rethink my conception of Schnabel"
- Classical CD Review

As with previous volumes in this series, the sides here show some variability of surface noise and coarseness, the latter being most obvious in the first movement of the 20th Sonata, but also evident in louder sections of the first movement of Sonata No. 17. Perhaps this isn't always a bad thing - a reminder that these recordings were made nearly 80 years ago is useful when the sonic transformations achieved with XR remastering and Capstan pitch stabilisation are so astonishingly great!

Andrew Rose

Fabulous new XR-remastered Beethoven Sonatas from Schnabel

"The sound quality ... made me rethink my conception of Schnabel"
- Classical CD Review

In terms of overall sound quality and the difficulties of restoration, this volume has generally presented fewer problems than most, something the listener should immediately find apparent in the clarity of sound achieved in many of the movements presented here. The usual problems inherent in trying to extact as much musical information as possible do still arise, but overall to a lesser extent, and the piano tone is often more vibrant and extended than in some previous volumes. Naturally the playing is exquisite!

Andrew Rose

Superb 32-bit XR-remastered Beethoven Sonatas from Schnabel

"The sound quality ... made me rethink my conception of Schnabel"
- Classical CD Review

This volume manages to span almost the entire recording time of Schnabel's Beethoven cycle, with the 27th Sonata dating from his first sessions in January 1932 and the 25th from the final recordings of November 1935 (the Naxos reissues suggest a single later re-recording session in 1937, but this is contradicted by Gray's discography from which we've sourced our information). What is surprising is the relative consistency in sound quality - if the very earliest sessions are perhaps slightly rougher around the edges it's a close-run thing, and all four sonatas, each recorded about a year or so apart hold together very well indeed. Technical problems common to each are common to most 78rpm recordings - surface noise and swish and occasional peak distortions. In each case I've been able to fix or reduce these, as well as applying effective pitch stabilisation and finding excellent sound quality through 32-bit XR remastering - as if "the performances had been bundled into a time machine and sent into the mono Fifties - no static, no hiss, no overbearing treble, and much truer to the live sound" as one reviewer (of Volumes 1 & 2 of this series) put it.

Andrew Rose

Schnabel's mighty Hammerklavier in superb 32-bit XR remaster

"The sound quality ... made me rethink my conception of Schnabel"
- Classical CD Review

Schnabel's recording of the Hammerklavier is without doubt hugely important. It's one of the sonatas he left to the very end of his groundbreaking traversal of the Beethoven sonata cycle - his November 1935 sessions completed the series - and his recording has divided critics ever since. For some it's a mess of too many missed notes and splurges - he takes it too fast and its beyond his ability. For others, however, Schnabel captures an essence of the piece which few can ever hope to match - the occasional slip is secondary to the overall impression and conveyance of meaning and artistry inherent in the work.

It is to the latter which I hope this new 32-bit XR restoration will appeal, as although we cannot (and would not) correct mistakes and missed notes, we can now appreciate a far clearer and fuller auditory picture of the grand scope of Schnabel's delivery. Steve Schwartz, writing in Classical CD Review on earlier volumes in our series, described well the merits of this approach: "it made me rethink my conception of Schnabel. He had always seemed to me a straight-ahead, rough-and-ready player, with a dominating rhythmic excitement. Without losing any of Schnabel's virtues I knew about, Pristine's incarnation showed me the subtlety of his line, the seamless naturalness of his crescendos and diminuendos, and his singing qualities. The last had totally escaped me."

Andrew Rose

Schnabel's Diabelli Variations in superb 32-bit XR remaster

First recording of a monumental musical achievement - in astounding sound quality

This transfer was made not from the original 78s but from later vinyl transfers made by EMI, which proved generally to offer much quieter sides but, by virtue of predating the digital era, little or no heavy-handed sonic intervention in their production. The results for the most part speak for themselves, with the majority of sides being clean and clear and largely devoid of the surface noise typical of the original HMV shellac discs.

However this restoration would not have been possible - at least not to this degree of success - prior to 2011. For despite EMI's best efforts, their vinyl transfers were dogged throughout with an astonishing degree of wow and flutter, leaving Schnabel's Bechstein sounding distinctly wobbly and inviting a certain sense of sea-sickness to the more pitch-sensitive listener.

New technology, its use pioneered by Pristine Audio in our Beethoven Sonatas series from Schnabel, has finally allowed us to overcome this problem, and deliver Schnabel's Bechstein in a rock-solid temperament never heard before. It has also responded astonishingly well to 32-bit XR remastering here, as can be heard from the opening bars of the theme that begins Beethoven's magnum opus for piano.

Despite a couple of sides displaying more than average surface noise, the overall quality I've been able to achieve is quite astounding, something that I've been able to carry on into the Rondos and Minuet which complete this release. Keeping a light touch on the use of noise reduction has further allowed Schnabel's piano to sing clearly and cleanly, with a fullness of tone and upper frequency extension which has been lacking from previous issues.

Andrew Rose

The Final Instalment - plus Schnabel's 1938 Eroica Variations

"They embody what may well prove to be the sonically finest transfer
that these recordings from the 1930s have received" - Fanfare

The final two sonatas in Schnabel's Beethoven cycle were both recorded at his first Abbey Road session in January 1932. As Schnabel later wrote, he was not overly pleased with the initial results of his efforts in a recording studio: "I felt as though I were being harried to death. Everything was artificial - the light, the air and the sound, and it took a very long time before I could make the gramophone people adjust some of their equipment to music, even longer to adjust myself to the improved equipment."

Getting the best out of the two sonata recordings has not been easy - despite running to just 45 minutes, my working files for the sonatas alone generated some 11¾ hours of music and an entire abandoned near-finished set. They were more coarsely and noisily recorded than later sonatas in the series and in order to get the best from them I've had to leave a higher level of background noise than in most of the others - my attempts to reduce noise further resulted in intolerable losses of musicality and unevenness of sound.

The tonal quality of the piano in the 1938-recorded Eroica Variations is generally much improved over the earlier recordings, and generally sides were much quieter. However, the presence of swish through many of the sides created a great deal of restoration work and has left some higher residual noise in places than I would have liked. Overall, however, I believe the sound quality here is far more closely representative of the finer nuances of Schnabel's piano tone than is possible to attain from the 1932 sonatas.

Andrew Rose

Schnabel plays Beethoven's Bagatelles

Completing our Schnabel solo Beethoven series in style

These transfers were made not from the original 78s but from later vinyl transfers made by EMI, which proved generally to offer much quieter sides but, by virtue of pre-dating the digital era, little or no heavy-handed sonic intervention in their production of a kind which unfortunately characterises and distorts EMI's current CD issues. The results for the most part speak for themselves, with the majority of sides being clean and clear and largely devoid of the surface noise typical of the original 1930s HMV shellac discs.

EMI appear to have used their 1960s transfers for the Opp. 33 and 126 Bagatelles (the 11 Bagatelles Op. 119 were first issued in 1982 on LP as new transfers) as both of these suffered a degree of flutter which, thanks to new technology, its use pioneered by Pristine Audio in our Beethoven Sonatas series from Schnabel, has finally been largely overcome. Schnabel's Bechstein piano has also responded astonishingly well to 32-bit XR remastering here - as well as has been heard throughout our Schnabel Beethoven series.

The main collections of Bagatelles were all recorded in 1937 and 1938; Für Elise however dates from 1932 and sounds both more distant and more noisy than the later recordings. Despite this, Schnabel's tone sings beautifully through the occasional murk, and as one who has played and heard this particular piece more times than I care to remember, his performance is quietly inspirational.

Andrew Rose