Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 6, Op. 61, Helen Schnabel, Piano

Helen Schnabel’s cooperation with the conductor F. Charles Adler, owner of the recording company SPA resulted from Adler's desire to record some of Artur Schnabel’s piano compositions. Two LPs were issued by SPA following this inquiry. Following these initial recordings a recording of Beethoven's 6th Piano Concerto was planned. Helen Schnabel indicated in a letter to Adler that although Beethoven left no original cadenzas for violin, he composed no less than three for his (Beethoven's) piano version, including a long first movement fantasia replete with kettledrum obbligato. The recording by Helen Schnabel with the Vienna Orchestra under C.F. Adler garnered excellent reviews. “The piano playing on this record is sensitive and telling,” wrote C. G. Burke in High Fidelity. “The piano sound is outstanding in the unfussy way characteristic of the piano recordings of the small company. (It does not seem to be a contrived sound, but rather one that happens.) The rondo is exciting in its nice delineation of line and tone: there are episodes here in startling clarity which generally are hinted.” The Montreal Star critic wrote that the performance “has already begun to grow on me to the point where I prefer Miss Schnabel in the big climaxes of the first movement to any of the others I have heard play this concerto.” In The Nation, the astute and difficult to please B. H. Haggin wrote: “Once more I am impressed by the qualities of Mrs. Schnabel’s playing that remind me of her great father-in-law’s.” Indeed, the passage of time has been kind to Helen Schnabel’s cultivated, musicianly interpretation.