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Artur Schnabel is remembered today by most as having been a great concert pianist who specialized in the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, the latter being the most "modern" composer to be performed by Schnabel; it might be assumed, therefore, that Schnabel's own music would be imspired by that of the classical period and that he avoided or disliked modernism. This was definitely not the case. Artur Schnabel was very reserved about his own music, hardly any of it being heard during his lifetime; he referred to himself as an "amateur composer" and to composing as a "sport" and due to the difficulty of most of his works, performances were relatively rare. His Notturno of 1914, a setting of a Richard Dehmel poem for contralto and piano was not performed until 1929 at festivals at Weisbaden and Amsterdam, and like much of his work was irritating to the conservative music critics of his day. Schnabel's music is marked by a distinctive personal style and extreme musical adventurism ...