Claudio Arrau plays Schumann and Dino Ciani plays Schumann, Chopin and Bartók

Two iconic pianists of the twentieth century join forces in these exceptional archives. Claudio Arrau brings his impeccable technique and expressive intensity to Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. A piece interweaving melancholic introspection and ardent expression, it reveals the influence of the composer’s mentors: Mozart in the second movement, Beethoven in the third. The Italian Dino Ciani follows suite with the first of Schumann’s Novelettes and Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2, Op. 62—the last that the Polish composer left us—before concluding with two excerpts from Bartók’s En plein air suite, evocative compositions that echo Debussy and Ravel. Their character highlights the virtuosity and sensitivity of the young prodigy, whose promising career was abruptly cut short by his premature death in a car accident at the age of 33.