Horowitz At His Worst Days(Horowitz's Fans, Don't Cry)

yeah, but did you see the rest of that recital? A totally amazing Carnaval, an unbelievably ethereal Op. 101, all in all, one of the best ever Horowitz performances on video!!! Because of his poetry and musicianship, his ...

Where did you get the rest? I don't understand, given his usual extra-high expectations on himself, why he didn't cancel the performance; nor why there could be such a big difference in quality of his playing at different time. Now, you told me that both ends could appear in the same recital!! It's like a miracle!!

Unfortunately the rest of the concert has been deleted from YouTube. Everybody thought it was terrible. The comments I read there really made me desperate: does nobody have ears? How could they not hear his magnificent musicianship? There were a few more wrong notes than usual, and obviously he was labouring under some burden - illness or simply a brain whose motor part on that particular day could not always keep up with its intellectual part. But what ideas! What musicianship! What an unfathomably rich process of plumbing the emotional meaning of a musical structure and finding which architechtonic aspects of that structure to highlight in order to best bring out those emotional shades! That Carnaval was a revelation: he never recorded it anywhere else. This is the only known record of his thoughts on the subject, and to my mind he wipes every other interpretation off the board. So many people say Horowitz played best in the 40's and 50's. But as he grew older, his musical mind gained so much in maturity. It was basically a composer's mind, and this comes out so much more in the late recordings. Perhaps the best example is to compare the two recordings of the great, late Schubert sonata in B flat major. The Deutsche Gramafon recording is so rich, bubbling with a composer's care aligned to a pianist's craftsmanship. Mind you, there are completely unforgettable, riveting and totally incomparable performances from that earlier time as well: I think especially of the live recording of Mussorsky's Pictures... I am looking for a copy of the DVD - if you can find one, let me know! AFF

It's back: There seems to be another one: Speaking of Schuman, I found very few good recordings. There're thausands of ways to play Chopin that I enjoy, but very few Schuman touches me. Perhaps it's just me..... The first I had was a collection of Schuman's work recorded by Wilhelm Kempff in the 1970s. Bored me to death....I almost thought I'd no ear for Schuman, and asked around why Schuman is that famous. Not until I heard Pletnev, Volodos, Argerich, Horowitz's recording do I start to appreciate his work.

The thing about Schumann is that his music, even the way it often looks on the page, doesn't seem very Romantic - there are lots of almost Baroque-like, square figurations - and yet its expressive content is arch-Romantic. The way to make the Romantic element come out is to than usual to find the magic heart of that music, and most pianists aren't even in the ballpark in this regard. I think that's why you never heard an interpretation you liked... Anyway, THANK YOU for alerting us to the return of these WONDERFUL clips... AFF

Hello! I personaly respect Horowitz very much, But how far he is from Rachmaninoffs playing, as well as other pianists. Rachmaninoff for me is musical God, i think as well as for others. I hope I will be not deleted from this forum after this opinion. anyway, Alan I deeply respect your DVD piano craft, I watched only one part on youtube, right now I ordered for myself because I have big echnical problems which I affraid could not solve whithout this DVD. I want ask you, what do you think about Hanon and Brahms exercises?

Welcome to our forum! No, you won't get kicked off for loving Rachmaninoff, who is one of my Gods too. And he was Horowtiz's god too, you must remember - very much a father figure and perhaps the greatest of his pianistic and musical inspirations. But what I always encourage is not simply "Like or dislike, like more or like less," but WHY? Can you define what it is exactly in Rachmaninoff's playing that makes you prefer it to Volodya's? Can we even put these things into words? It's an important exercise in understanding our process when we listen to great or not so great performances of great music - to be able to articulate just what it is we are hearing. As for Hanon and Brahms, they can both be very valuable, depending on how they are done. For instance if you use them as a vehicle to manifest the ideas I show in the film, they can help a great deal in developing the hand. Done incorrectly they can cause problems, as can anything for that matter... It's all a question of . Best wishes, AFF

Thank you very much for reply. By the way, I recieved DVD yesterday. But pity thing is that DVD in USA but I'm personaly live in Russia near St. Peterburg. So, my friend will ship it to me (as far as I know you don't ship it to Russia). About Rachmaninoff! I even don't know how express my respect to this composer, pianist and conductor. No body have his crying sound (I always use to compare it to very Russian tree - birch). I like his rythm - iron rythm. For example last piece from Schumann's Carnaval - you could hear it. When I hear his playing I could only regret that there is no more of his recordings, no video of his playing... How I would like to hear his corelly variations op.42 or second sonata, many other things. Also he represents Great Russian piano school(Real Russian School), which is now very far from that perfection. I think he very suffered for his homeland, bolshevicks destroyed Russia. and we need many and many years to comeback to that glorious period of Russian History. Nobody loved Russia more than Rachmaninoff and his playing represents it perfectly. About Horowitz, I very respect his ability to make PPP to large FF. His thechnique is phenomenal of course. But he makes many unnecessary accents, jumps and other vulgarity, so when I hear it even in his great performance (his musical ideas are great of course, I never doubt about it), It is annoys me. I respect quality(perfection) very much, Horowitz did not, he said this in his interview, I don't need perfection, perfection is for Heifiz. When I hear Rachmaninoff, I always use to think, that better play something than he done is impossible, he is perfection. So, it is all what I can say.

I love your thoughts, what a great post! First of all, we do indeed ship our DVD's to Russia, I don't know why you got the idea we don't. We ship worldwide, literally anywhere, to any country that has a postal service. We've even sent a DVD to Nepal! About Rachmaninoff, I agree wholeheartedly. About the Great Russian School, I also agree. But lately I have had reason to believe that it is not ENTIRELY dead. I heard a contestant from the Ukraine play at the Bajic Competition in Novi Sad last March who was unbelievably good - she had great technique, I wrote about it elsewhere on this forum (about the direct correlation of good hand arch with good tone, and her amazing Bach Chaconne). Then recently I heard a young German pianist whose name escapes me who studies with Maisenberg in Linz, Austria, whose playing was phenomenal and really had those qualities of sound and expression that we associate with the Russian School. Then there's a guy, Karin Kornienko, who I heard play the best Scriabin 10th Sonata and also a fine Scriabin concerto at the first Scriabin International Piano Competition in Nizhny Novgorod in 1995, and this to me was a manifestation of "the real thing..." So that school is not entirely dead, although mostly what we see is a gross deformation of it, a caricature. The thing is, if a tradition is to survive it must be living and speculative - you can't just pass information down through the generations mechanically. That's what leads to this degeneration of a great body of knowledge. Each new generation must discover these great truths anew, of course with the help of their mentors, but not blindly following and imitating their mentors. Gavrilov is a good example. His early recordings are steely, fast, metallic and ugly. I cannot bear to listen to them for more than a few seconds because the sound is so far removed from the heart which this music must express (I am remembering specifically a recording of Rachmaninoff etudes). It literally pains my soul to be exposed to that brutality and aggression. But several years ago he stopped performing altogether and took a complete sabbatical of 4 or 5 years. He went back to the drawing board and transformed himself. So it can be done! Zoltan Kocsis is a case of the opposite direction. I remember a Schubert recital in Montreal way back when, that was so poetic, so intimate, so philosophically profound, that it astonished me how such a young artist could play with such deep maturity of thought and emotion. Then later on he started to play fast and loud, and I was really repelled. I don't know what happened, he got ambitious or something, but it's a real pity, we really lost a wonderful artist...