Claudio Arrau

The Chilean classical pianist Claudio Arrau, born on the 6th of February, 1903, was the son of an ophthalmologist and a piano teacher. 

The family he belonged to was an old, prominent family in Southern Chile. His ancestor was the Spanish engineer Lorenzo de Arrau, who was sent to Chile by King Carlos III of Spain to establish an arsenal which made cannons. But the more prominent one was his great-grandmother. With her, Claudio is a direct descendant of the Campbell Clan, a Scottish noble family. 

Young Claudio was a child prodigy, which was greatly helped by his mother being an amateur pianist. She was the one who introduced her son to the instrument. At the tender age of 5, he already gave his first concert. And a year later, Arrau auditioned in front of several Chilean politicians, including president Pedro Montt. Montt was so impressed by the boy that he immediately began arrangements for Arrau’s education. Eventually, the 8-year-old Arrau was sent on a ten-year-long Chilean government grant to study music in Germany.

Arrau studied at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, where he was under Martin Krause’s tutelage, who was a student of the classical master Franz Liszt. As expected, this would take the boy’s already-massive skill at the keys to a whole new level. By the age of 11, Arrau was skilled enough to play two of the most challenging works to play on the piano: Liszt’s Transcendental Etudes, and Brahms’s Paganini Variations.