Artur Schnabel was a genius. I say this because, like the controversial John Cage, Schnabel recognized that the music was in the silence between the notes. What this means is that the greatest of artists know that the pause, the space, if done "right" creates the necessary "tension" that glues the music together. Nobody did this better than Schabel and the proof is in the pudding - if he never left anything behind other than the Beethoven "32" his place as one the greatest of recorded artists would be self assured.
Yes, Schnabel was a very great performing musician but, like another superb performing musician,Wilhelm Furtwangler, he thought of himself first and foremost as a creator, a composer. Indeed, Schnabel left behind a small but impressive catalogue however neglected it is today. Perhaps this is so because as a performer, Schnabel was supreme in the early romantics but his own compositions are anything but romantic; his works are highly indebted to his friend Schoenberg and their structure is at home in the second Viennese School.
From the original album notes on ML5447 by Cesar Saerchinger
Schnabel's String Trio of 1925 (for violin, viola and cello) is the last of four chamber works written during successive summer holidays from 1921 to 1925 and may be regarded as representative of his "middle" period. He was still under forty and in the midst of a highly successful European season as Germany's top-ranking pianist when he suddenly retired from the concert platform to spend the winter alone in a remote Austrian mountain village. Here he put his creative powers to a new and severe test — to explore the resources of the "linear" contrapuntal style, free from the current traditional harmonic conventions and rhythmic patterns, but also from the newly invented devices of atonality adopted by the radical contemporaries of the day. The result was the first movement of a new string quartet, his second, which was to be completed the following summer. It was a radical break with the past and specifically his own. And it was the beginning of what we now know as Schnabel's mature style.
This new and highly individual manner of writing was to produce some of his most remarkable works, including the third and fourth quartets as well as the String Trio of 1925. This work, though shorter and more concise than its immediate predecessors, constitutes the epitome of this chamber music group, and was the last to appear for over five years. It consists of three relatively short movements. The first (Allegro energico) is forceful and expressive, clear and characteristically rich in its contrapuntal design. The second (Larghetto) opens with a virtually diatonic two-voiced theme which combines stateliness with serenity. The same theme is quoted literally in the strong third movement (Vivacissimo), but in an entirely different light.
When first performed by the International Society for Contemporary Music in Vienna, ten years after it was written, its composer was hailed by the critics as a "creative musician of power and originality." No other works of Schnabel had been heard in Vienna where he had spent his youth and "learned his trade."
The "Duodecimet" 1950 is, as its name implies, a piece for twelve voices, or parts. According to sketchy indications in the manuscript score, and the nature of the music itself, it is meant for twelve solo instruments — strings, wind instruments and percussion. It is Schnabel's last composition, finished one year before his death, at Axenstein (Switzerland) within sight of Lake Lucerne and the mountains beyond it — a view "beautiful beyond description" in Schnabel's own words.
These four short movements, as close to abstract music as he had ever written, seem nevertheless to reflect the beauty of the idyllic scene. In them the composer achieved what he had long striven for: the utmost freedom in melodic, rhythmic and polyphonic design and expression. The first movement is a vigorous, moderately fast Introduzione; the second, presumably slow, is followed by a Scherzo and an Epilogue (moderato).
The whole work is characteristic of what Krenek calls "Schnabel's peculiar kaleidoscopic technique of motivic design," i.e., each movement has its characteristic melodic unit which appears again and again to form ever new combinations. While this use of a tone-group in ever-changing juxtaposition may be reminiscent of the so-called "twelve-tone" technique used by certain contemporary composers, it is important to remember that Schnabel regarded this or any prescribed method or system as incompatible with complete freedom of invention.
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