Biography

Claudio Arrau was born on February 6, 1903 in Chillán, Chile. He was an actor, known for The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), SF8 (2020) and Our Kind of Traitor (2016). He was married to Ruth Schneider and Erika Burkewitch. He died on June 9, 1991 in Mürzzuschlag, Styria, Austria.

One of the world's great pianists, his specialties were composers Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt, but he had a huge repertory that also covered such composers as Debussy and Beethoven. He recorded all of Beethoven's piano sonatas, as well as the Diabelli Variations. He also recorded all five Beethoven piano concertos twice, with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 (the Emperor) getting a third recording in digital stereo in the mid 1980s.

His appearance on "The Bell Telephone Hour" was broadcast on the same evening that President John F. Kennedy delivered his Cuban Missile Crisis speech, in which the President informed the U.S. that Soviet missile bases were being constructed in Cuba for a possible nuclear attack.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 3, 1991-1993, pages 28-29. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001.

Among the judges at Arrau's first piano competition was renowned pianist Artur Rubinstein.