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- Austrian pianist Artur Schnabel was the first pianist to record all of Ludwig van Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas. The recordings were made in Abbey Road Studios in London on a C. Bechstein grand piano from 1932 to 1935, seven years after electrical recording was invented. Originally recorded on 78 rpm phonograph records for the His Master's Voice (HMV) label, they have been reissued numerous times on LP and CD. In 1932, HMV launched the Beethoven Society (sometimes referred to as the Beethoven Sonata Society) whose objective was to issue recordings of Schnabel's recordings of the sonatas to advance subscribers. Although Schnabel refused to make recordings for years, he agreed to take on the project. It began in January 1932, when the Sonata No. 31 in A♭ major (Op. 110) was the first to be successfully recorded. The final recordings were made in November 1935, and the project culminated with Sonata No. 25 in G major (Op. 79). The Beethoven Society began distributing Schnabel's recordings in March 1932, issuing 12 volumes through 1937. Independently of the Beethoven Society series, Schnabel also recorded Sonata No. 30 in E major (Op. 109) and Sonata No. 32 in C minor (Op. 111) in 1942 for RCA Records, and the first movement of Sonata No. 14 in C♯ minor (Op. 27 No. 2) in 1947, which was never issued on record. The recordings continue to draw universal recognition and have received numerous honors. In 1937, Gramophone wrote: "To [his] technical mastery Schnabel adds and fuses an intensely intelligent, not merely 'intellectual' mind ... The result is a perfectly blended interpretation of the music as a spiritual expression and as a musical organism." In 1986, Tim Page, writing in The New York Times, noted that Schnabel's "historic" recordings were "the standard by which all subsequent performances have been judged". In 2014, William Robin of The New Yorker wrote that Schnabel "remains the eminent Beethoven interpreter on record". The recordings were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1975 and the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2018. (en)
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