He was compared to Liszt and to Paganini. For Clara Haskil, Vladimir Horowitz was “Satan at the keyboard”. A homage in the form of a box set brings together never-before-heard recordings, and richly complements and illustrates them with conversations and photos that unveil the man behind the myth. The discography of this thin-skinned colossus, this fascinating artist, is further swelled by a Sony box set with three albums available in digital format: one from his comeback concert, held after twelve years of silence, in Carnegie Hall on 9 May 1965, and two from his rehearsal sessions on 7 and 14 April of that year in the same hall. On the programme: Bach, with no concessions or embellishments in Horowitz’s hands; Schumann, irresistible and fantastical; but also Scriabin, Chopin and Debussy.
Imagine Horowitz at the piano, racing his big hands up and down the keys, looking perfectly nonchalant. But his style is all about power, imagination and precision. His initial attack – swift, never hesitating – seems powerful, but also capable of infinite nuance, running from a magical pianissimo to an implacable marcato. His technique is irreproachable: a student of Theodor Leschetizky in Kiev, he learned the piano after the tradition of Anton Rubinstein – and it allows him to sing freely, with a constant attention to the sound; generously and with a loving attention to the text. The Träumerei, from the Kinderszenen, op. 15, performed at the 9 May concert, at a reserved pace, has him searching the piano for the muted sounds of a journey into memory: it lends the piece a touching flavour of remembrance. But then we are violently awoken by the applause from the audience – retained (amplified?) by Sony (a bit too much?) – which breaks out around the final notes.