Steinway & Sons releases the first complete, definitive recording of the piano music of Artur Schnabel.

Prolific Steinway Artist Jenny Lin interprets the original work of the revered concert pianist, who saw composition as his “only freedom”.

Artur Schnabel, still regarded as one of the most important pianists of the 20th century, particularly for his role in re-popularizing Beethoven’s piano music, was himself a passionate composer. His work as a pianist has overshadowed his composition career, but Steinway & Sons aims to correct this imbalance of perception with its latest release, Artur Schnabel - Complete Works for Solo Piano. Steinway Artist Jenny Lin, a thoughtful programmer known for championing the works of lesser-known composers, performs the Schnabel solo piano catalogue for this double album.

Despite a busy career as a pianist, Schnabel was also an astoundingly prolific composer, and solo piano music comprises a relatively small portion of his total output; he also wrote chamber music including five string quartets, songs (mostly for his wife, contralto Therese Behr-Schnabel), and three symphonies. And though he was particularly known for his pianistic interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert, his own compositional technique eventually shed the conventions of traditional diatonic harmony, moving into an idiom that confused and upset many of his biggest supporters and critics.

Schnabel, however, did not compose to please others, but rather because it provided him the most pleasure of any of his musical endeavors. In a letter to his wife, Schnabel wrote: “Manuscript paper is the only place where I am completely free. My space. With me as the master. I decide where to expand or set boundaries. I alone reap the fruits.”

Schnabel’s compositions for solo piano span the majority of his career, allowing listeners of this album to hear the progression of his style. From the Three Fantasy Pieces of 1898, composed when Schnabel was only 16, to the astonishing Piano Sonata of his middle period, through to the richly expressive and succinct Seven Piano Pieces of 1947, Schnabel’s compositions can finally be placed in the context of history as a valuable and significant body of work.