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Arrau was one of the most highly esteemed performers of the central Romantic piano repertoire, especially for Beethoven, but also for Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, and Brahms. His mother was an amateur pianist who gave him early lessons. He gave his first public recital at the age of five in Santiago, and studied with a teacher named Paoli. The Chilean government gave him a grant to send him to Berlin at the age of seven to study at Stern's Conservatory, where his teacher from 1912 to 1918 was Martin Krause. Teacher and student agreed, by the time the youth was fifteen, that his piano technique and artistic polishing were complete; Arrau never went to another teacher. He had already won the Gustav Holländer Medal and the Ibach Prize, made his Berlin debut to astonished acclaim in 1914, and toured in Germany and Scandinavia during World War I. He returned to Chile in 1921 with a triumphal homecoming concert, and then toured in the Western Hemisphere, coming to the United States for the fi...