Vladimir Horowitz: The Prodigal Returns

"I had to go back to Russia before I died," explains the last romantic

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How does he do it? It is a question pianists have been asking in despair since Horowitz first exploded on the scene. "I did not have to develop a technique," he says. "It was there from the beginning." Although he is not particularly self-analytical about his mechanics, he credits his talented sister Regina, or Genya, with inspiring his famously unorthodox posture at the keyboard: sitting low, the hands flat rather than arched, the fingers, if anything, flaring upward. Surely no one can play the piano this way. But he does. "I discovered that the lower one sits, the greater attention one pays to making tone," he explains. "You are not using shoulders and upper arms. You are using the wrists, fingers and, to some extent, the forearm."

Even more important than his technique, though, is the sense of adventure he brings to each piece he performs, no matter how many times he has played it. He has recorded Chopin's Ballade in G Minor several times. On each occasion the bardic work, by turns plaintive, ruminative and explosive, emerged from his ministrations differently. The 1947 studio reading is a long-lined, unified structure whose final dramatic outburst comes as a logical summation of all that has gone before; two later performances from the '60s, both recorded in concert, are more febrile, as if the pianist were making the piece up as he went along. Producer Thomas Frost, who has worked with him since 1963, notes that the basic structure of a Horowitz performance is always thought out in advance. "But where he does change is in the spur of the moment. You don't know what to expect when he plays. He does it differently each time, with a degree of suspense in the way he does it. That is why he is so exciting."

Most concerts are simply recitals. Horowitz's are events. His emergence in 1965 from a self-imposed twelve-year retirement, during which he made records but did not appear in public, was a sensation. Hundreds of people queued up outside New York City's Carnegie Hall on a rainy, cold night, waiting patiently for tickets to go on sale the next morning. "Is this a Beatle thing?" inquired one passerby. "No, this is a Horowitz thing," came the reply.

What is it about Horowitz that sets him apart from every other living pianist--indeed, from the other great pianists of the century? Horowitz made his reputation during a Golden Age of pianism, in competition with the likes of Rachmaninoff, Josef Hofmann, Josef Lhévinne, Moriz Rosenthal, Leopold Godowsky and Arthur Rubinstein, to name a few. Rosenthal, Lhévinne and Godowsky all had flawless techniques to rival Horowitz's, to which asset Rachmaninoff added physical power and Hofmann unearthly control. At his peak, Horowitz had it all, heightened and amplified by a daredevil recklessness that infused every performance with an exhilarating, unabashed theatricality. If he was not the deepest musical thinker or the most probing interpreter, few seemed to care. Horowitz was unique, and he was the people's choice. His rival Rubinstein had a broader repertoire and a warmer personality; there was never any doubt about who was the better musician. But neither was there any doubt about who was the better pianist.

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