Artur Schnabel

Artur Schnabel was an Austrian classical pianist, who also composed and taught. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th century's most respected and most important pianists, his playing displayed a vitality, profundity and spirituality in the Austro-German classics, particularly the works of Beethoven and Schubert. His performances of these compositions have often been hailed as models of interpretative penetration, and his best-known recordings are those of the Beethoven piano sonatas. Harold C. Schonberg referred to... Schnabel as "the man who invented Beethoven". Born in Lipnik near Bielitz, Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire , Schnabel was the youngest of three children born to Isidor Schnabel, a textile merchant, and his wife Ernestine . He had two sisters, Clara and Frieda. His family was Jewish. Schnabel's parents moved to Vienna in 1884, when he was two. He began learning the piano at the age of four, when he took a spontaneous interest in his eldest sister Clara's piano lessons.
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