Horowitz: The Last Romantic
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Free Music Notes for Horowitz: The Last Romantic
Free Music Review: Speechless
Hit: 5 Stars
Towards the end of his career as a pianist as well as his life, Horowitz's playing reached such peaks of wisdom and beauty that it defies any attempt at description and ultimately renders the human language completely powerless and unable to fully capture and express its vast world of ideas and feelings. On his last recordings he doesn't emerge as an elderly pianist who was sadly past his prime, but rather as a consumate musician who had reached by then the pinnacle of his art and therefore was capable of getting from his piano the most exquisite and profound statements one's able to listen to in the whole piano discography of the 20th century. He imbues his rendition of the famous Chopin's Polonaise Héroïque with so much emotional power and intellectual depth that he turns it into something like a highly condensed philosophical treatise written in poetry. Don't miss it by any chance.Free Music Review: Who cares that Horowitz was past his prime?
Hit: 5 Stars
This is the sound recording of a famous video of Horowitz performing in his home. There is a great deal to love on this disk. The Bach/Busoni is tremendously beautiful. The Mozart is just wonderful as is the Chopin Mazurka.The Scherzo shows that Horowitz was once a titan of the keyboard, but as he himself says in the video "pretty good for an old man". The resto of the program are other shorter pieces that show Horowitz's remaining strengths - his tone color, his line, his interpretive abilities.
This is a great disk to have and is an important historical disk of one of the all time great pianists even if it is in his old age. The charisma pours out and you know why he was still selling out any auditorium whenever he cared to play.
Free Music Review: 5 stars, of course!
Hit: 5 Stars
What can I say about Wladimir Horowitz? He's absolutely unique and competent. Some of the pieces(like Chopin's Mazurka ) are extraordinary. Definitely a must buy.Free Music Review: 81 Years Young
Hit: 4 Stars
The career of Vladimir Horowitz had many ups and downs. When he retired after a series of disastrous concerts in 1983, very few thought he would ever play again. It was learned that Horowitz's was off his game during that time due to anti-depressant medication which affected his memory and coordination. Horowitz dropped the medications in 1984, and spent much of that year enduring withdrawal symptoms. He didn't begin practicing again until late-1984.
By 1985, he felt well enough to begin performing again, but didn't want to immediately face a live audience. It was decided that a documentary would be made, and thus "Vladimir Horowitz: The Last Romantic," filmed in the pianist's townhouse, came to fruition. The performances in this CD are taken from that film, although in some cases different takes were used.
Horowitz, 81 years young at the time, plays well here--although his performance is not quite on the same level it would be one year later at his legendary Moscow recital. The Bach-Busoni Chorale, Mozart Sonata, and Schumann Novelette reveal the playing of a grand master in sovereign command of his resources. The Bach-Busoni is especially noteworthy for Horowitz's ability to separate musical lines. The Chopin Mazurka and Liszt Consolation are wonderfully poetic, and the Rachmaninoff Prelude is appropriately brooding.
It must be admitted however, some of the more bravura pieces do not match his best playing from earlier years. The Chopin Scherzo betrays hints of frailty (although some of the tempos are astonishing), and the "Heroic" Polonaise is taken at a rather cautious tempo. Any doubt about the coordination of Horowitz's fingers, however, will be banished by the Moszkowski Etude. Lightning fast, with very little pedal, the pianist reportedly did it in one take.
The sound is rather airless and confined, but clean and focused.
Free Music Review: You have to hear this to believe it ... but better not
Hit: 1 Stars
Would those readers who are besotted with Horowitz kindly look somewhere else. I'm trying to be helpful to those who are not familiar with Horowitz, and may be misled in their expectations by the unconscionable hype around this pianist - as if he was the eighth wonder of the world.
The remarkable aspect of Horowitz's piano playing is his colouristic instinct and the uncanny speed of his fingerwork. These are the two features that used to drive his audiences wild with enthusiasm. But for decades the press was insistent on finding fault with him as an interpreter of music. Now that he's dead, they reverse their tune. That's not very helpful to a novice. So what was their gripe back in the good/bad old days?
SImply that the technical issues of Horowitz's piano playing were all he had to give. It never mattered much whether his composer was Chopin, Scarlatti, Beethoven or Scriabin: he had an inexhaustible array of tricks to "enliven" their works with his pianistic mannerisms; frequently adding to their difficulty by "revisions" or even additions of his own. During an interview, he once pointed to a picture of Rachmaninoff, saying "He is my God"; but that didn't stop him from bowdlerising his God as well. And this is really the essence of the problem: Horowitz was a performer, not an interpreter. For the ordinary music lover this spells out as getting always the sauce, but hardly ever the meat in the meal.
As to the album under review: Since 15 years of silence elapsed between this and his last album, and bearing in mind the sudden unexpected ovations from the critical fraternity, my curiosity outweighed the bad memories. It should not have. As the saying goes: The leopard never changes his spots. I put the Liszt Impromptu on first, and immediately my heart sank into the pit of my stomach. Nothing different from the old Horowitz; he still had not learnt to differentiate between music and circus acts. All of the colouristic mania is still there, plus the eccentric pedalling and the wilful changes of tempo and pitch. The point is: once you've heard this sort of thing - these distortions of the music for the sake of effects - 20-30 times, you've had enough - unless of course you are a Horowitz worshipper. And so to Chopin, Scriabin, Schumann - one after the other the same tiresome emphasis on the keys and the sound they produce, none on the music itself. The major work, Schumann's Kreisleriana, is well represented in the catalogue by exceptionally sensitive readings from Anda, Pollini, Perahia, Rubinstein, Lupu, to name but a few; but this reading by Horowitz is not serious: it's a Walt Disney cinema stunt. He even got his fingers in a tangle in one hot and loud presto passage which surprisingly he didn't correct. But it's not worthwhile to go into details. The artists I have just named put their life's work in the service of music and seek to enlighten us, the listeners, about their insights into the music and convey something of the profound relevance of music in our lives. It is their sense of responsibility to their audiences. And it is the difference that counts as far as this album is concerned. When people argue about their readings, they are concerned with interpretation, with truth to the music, with service to the art.
This album is of no concern to music lovers. It will appeal to piano students and to lovers of the extraordinary, the exotic, the far-fetched.
But I wrote this review for music lovers. The others will have very different values to apply to this album.