Rosen and Dubal on Horowitz

No, I haven't read that book, but thank you for informing me. I'll have to locate a copy. When Schonberg said that the level of virtuosity of early twentieth century greats has practically vanished from the earth, I don't think he was saying that no pianist could play like that, but merely that there were far fewer pianists around today who could duplicate those technical standards. Schonberg did say that Pollini's technique is "perfect" and that some people would place Michelangeli in Horowitz's league as a super virtuoso. Would you rate Pollini in the same technical league as Lhévinne or Hofmann? Pollini's "Double Thirds" Etude certainly wasn't as good as Lhévinne's, and I know that Pollini couldn't match Lhévinne's octaves. Hamelin is an extraordinary technician; one blogger considers him the greatest technician of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His Don Juan Fantasy is even better than that of Barere. When you rate certain pianists at a higher level of mechanics than Horowitz, are you merely considering speed and accuracy, or are you also considering evenness of passagework? So from your listening experience, pianists like Lhévinne, Hofmann, Hamelin, Michelangeli, and Pollini make fewer mistakes than Horowitz did, even in the earliest part of his career?

While Pollini might not stand up to Lhevinne on some pieces his grasp of the piano repertoire is unparralleled. He has played everything from Bach through Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy and Chopin right into Boulez and Stockhausen. He can get to the expressive and structural core of some of the most complex music ever written. His tonal control and passage work are brilliant but I dont think he goes for the same kind of rhetoric as the early 20th century masters so it is difficult to compare them. But he can handle more technical and structural complexity than almost any other pianist. I think it is just as impressive a technical feat to perfectly realize all the details of a Late Beethoven Sonata and to make them all cohere as it is to play a double thirds or octave passage like Lhevinne. I will concede that Pollini's octaves are not on the level of Horowitz or Lhevinne. Like Horowitz he has tremendous energy and daring. Take the last movement of Beethoven's Les Adieux. As a side note, I think his technique looks much better in this video than it does in some of his later videos. He doesn't look so good in the 4th piano concerto he did in 2004. Pollini and Michelangeli definitely make fewer mistakes than Horowitz in my listening experience. But I am more familiar with Horowitz's later work. I have only heard a handful of recordings by Hofmann and Lhevinne. Hofmann makes a fair amount of mistakes but he wasn't at his best when most of the recordings were made. I recall Hamelin making a few slips in the Chopin 3rd piano sonata and a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody but they were brief memory lapses more than anything else. Hamelin has mastered large portions of the piano repertoire that Horowitz thought near impossible, like Godowsky, Alkan and others, in addition to the standard repertoire. His sound is not as special as Horowitz's and I dont think he communicates with as much urgency but he is still remarkable.

Pollini definitely does have an excellent sense of the architectural qualities of music; few pianists have his organizational powers. It's too bad that there aren't more recordings of Lhévinne and Hofmann or even a young Horowitz. I know he recorded two Liszt-Paganini Etudes (which you already heard) in the early 1930's, and there is a piano roll of the Figaro Fantasy from the 1920's. His Liszt Sonata and Funerailles, both considered definitive performances, are also from the early 1930's. Hamelin should definitely be added to the list of pianists with sensational octaves. I do remember Horowitz saying that the Godowsky Passacaglia is unplayable. He also said that he couldn't play the "Winter Wind" Etude, as after two pages, his wrist and his arm feel as if they are going to fall off. When he was in his 80's, Horowitz told Dubal that he couldn't play Chopin Opus 10 #1, 2, and 7, but I wonder if he merely meant that he couldn't play them in his old age. According to Alexander Fiorillo, a Horowitz student, the Maestro could play all of the Opus 10 Etudes "perfectly."

I think Horowitz tried to record the Winter Wind Etude for his last recording along with the Op.25 no.1 and whatever the other one was. People who were at the session said he played it wonderfully and this is towards the end of his life! In the Glenn Plaskin book it says that in his younger days he had no trouble with the Black key etude but he quickly got tired while playing the Winter Wind. On a related note, Claudio Arrau said that Teresa Careno had the best octaves he heard and that she could play them without fatigue while Horowitz could only play his octaves in short bursts. I dont know if that is true since he had no difficulty with the octaves in Chopin's Op.53. It is worth noting though that Horowitz's programs were relatively short and his performing repertoire were relatively small. Rubinstein and Arrau could play multiple large-scale works in concert, like a Beethoven or Brahms cycle, well into their eighties. I wonder if their technical approaches were better suited for endurance. One of Horowitz's students used to put his hands on Horowitz's back and shoulders while Horowitz played and found that he could accumulate lots of tension and then immediately relax. I think this ability is due to his skeletal alignment and perfectly symmetrical balance of his whole body.

Maybe Horowitz's technique was "wrong" in a sense. Perhaps his physical approach did involve a good amount of unnecessary exertion, which could explain why his technique wasn't sustainable. Or perhaps Horowitz's technique declined because he simply didn't practice as much in later life. Even if Horowitz's technique was causing undue tension, it seems that that very physical approach was necessary to produce the wonderful sound that Horowitz did. For example, it appears that his passagework had such sparkle and richness of sound because of the flat finger approach. Had he played in a more "natural" fashion, he might have maintained his technique for a longer period of time, but then his sound wouldn't have been as special as it was. As to the tension in Horowitz's back and shoulders, do you think that it is the result of the body absorbing the power of a fortissimo? If so, that might explain why Horowitz considered loud playing to be more tiring than soft playing. It's interesting that Horowitz insisted that he couldn't play the "Winter Wind" Etude, even in his prime, but those who heard him in late life thought it sounded great. I suppose a standard that is unacceptable for Horowitz would probably be considered excellent by almost any other pianist.

Horowitz was still technically very well preserved later in life and he was making plans to record either the Liszt A major or Rachmaninoff 3rd near his death. I do not think his technique was ever unhealthy though it is interesting that Janis and Grafmann both suffered from playing related injuries. At the same time he did not play that many "big pieces" when he was old unlike Rubinstein and Arrau. Horowitz was extremely engrossed in details and he seemed hyper alert to the color and nuance of every chord. Maybe he spent more spiritual energy per unit time than the others. But then again, maybe he just had different standards and goals. The public loved his performances of miniatures so he put a lot of work into fine polishing. If you are playing a Scarlatti sonata or Chopin Mazurka you would probably be more concerned with the fine working out of details whereas with a Beethoven concerto the overall gesture and design is more important. So even though the length of each piece is very different, one might end up using equal amounts of energy. I dont think that the tension was due to absorbing the shock of a Fortissimo as much as generating it. Tension might be a misleading term in the first place because it restricts freedom of movement. His skeletal organization was so strong that he could generate an explosive key stroke on a fortissimo and absorb all the shock. Regarding Horowitz's practice habits, Menuhin once said that when Horowitz was young all he wanted to do was work on the piano and Dubal says that in later years Horowitz used to practice quite a bit more than he said he did. It does seem like he was under-prepared for his Mozart Concerto recording. Jascha Heifetz reportedly kept up his technical standards by extremely slow and disciplined practice.

I've been away from the forum for awhile - this long thread has developed that I never knew about... where to jump in? For now I have a few comments on the beginning posts. Much of Shonberg's , which is a kind of bible for us. Horowitz's evenness in many situations was unparalled. I am thinking of the blur of notes in the cadenza near the end of the Schubert-Liszt Valse Caprice from the Moscow concert. When I heard that live in Boston the same year, it was even more perfect. Also from that concert was the B minor Scherzo of Chopin, whose evenness was ghostly and unimaginable. But there were certain situations where Horowitz himself said that others had superior technique. The reason for this paradox: Horowitz's ear overrode his perceived mechanical deficiencies. The other thing was his hypersensitivity which might have led him to believe he was playing unevenly when to others it sounded amazingly even. A little-known fact: Horowitz studied with Cortot for 4 years. He went to Cortot to find out how he played double thirds so well. Cortot told him, "OK I will show you how I do it, but first we'll work on Bach, and on Beethoven sonatas. You must learn first how to play a melody." I have this from Phil Cohen, who heard it from Yvonne Hubert when he was her assistant. She herself had been Cortot's assistant. Cortot had far more to do with forming Horowitz than people generally recognize. Listen to Cortot's recording of the Weber A flat major sonata and hear how much of "Horowitz" there is in it. But Cortot came first! AFF

In Dubal's biography, it says that Horowitz had talked about recording the Liszt Concerto in Eb when he was 83, but Dubal talked him out of it, saying that it is a concerto for a young man and that the critics would have a field day saying that the Horowitz octaves are fading and would compare him to other virtuosi, such as Horowitz himself in his prime and his pupil Byron Janis. I know that Janis had arthritis, but was that related to his playing? I know that arthritis (unlike tendinitis or carpal tunnel) can be a medical or genetic condition that is unrelated to movement patterns. What do you think was happening in his back and shoulders as he played if it wasn't tension? Was it merely the act of activating the necessary muscles? Oh really? Is it borrowed to the point of plagiarism? If Horowitz had studied with Cortot for four years, I wonder why he never credited Cortot as a teacher. Schonberg had claimed that Horowitz only took a few lessons from Cortot, and thus couldn't rightfully be considered a Cortot student.

This goes to show that Dubal was an asshole. Horowitz had no tension in his back, he was extremely well-organized. Some people mistakenly believed he had tension just because he didn't move around a lot. But he was too wise to move around: all that movement would be a distraction and would destabilize the precise organization of the many physical alignments he needed for him to play with such exactitude. Tension would have also prevented him from playing as he did. Much of Shonberg's The Great Pianists is lifted word for word from Reginald Gerig's Great Pianists and Their Technique, which is a kind of bible for us. Oh really? Is it borrowed to the point of plagiarism?In my opinion yes. I have better sources than Shonberg. And Horowitz never credited Tarnowsky either, who formed him far more than Blumenfeldt ever did. I believe it was an ego thing... AFF

Yes, I think that tension only serves to prevent you from being able to access your maximum sonority, as it is much harder to move the body at all when you are tight. Although I wonder why Horowitz's students would think his back was tight when they touched it. Perhaps it is faulty awareness regarding what excess tension is. Neuhaus pointed out that no body part is relaxed, except in a state of inertia. Perhaps Horowitz simply displayed the necessary (but completely minimal) tension for physical action. According to some pedagogues, the challenge is that on one hand tension is needed to perform any physical movement, while on the other hand, the more tension that you have, the harder it is to move. Allegedly, the solution is only to engage in the absolute minimum amount of tension necessary to move a body part. Yes, it may be the case that at that point in his career, Horowitz felt that he couldn't admit to having learned from someone else. According to the Plaskin biography, Cortot mused that he never showed Horowitz how to play the double notes, as he believed that was an insufficient reason for studying. But I'm sure that musically, Horowitz learned a lot from Cortot.