Download A meeting with Horowitz - Geoffrey Douglas Madge

A meeting with Horowitz
(A revised text written in 1986
for a book on understanding Horowitz).
Listening to Vladimir Horowitz, either on record or live, has always
been a fascinating experience for me. One is immediately struck by the
tremendous colour and huge dynamics in his playing, from ppp to fff. His
daring interpretations and use of the acoustic possibilities of the instrument
and hall, the expression of his personality, even though at times it possibly in
conflict with the music. It is so easy to criticise when a pianist reaches such
heights of achievement, with such provocation! Yet, in many performances he
presented a very strong personality and give a stamp of great individuality .
He once said that "it wasn't necessary to always like what you do, dare to do
otherwise."
At times I am both puzzled by and filled with admiration for many of
his recordings. They can be most disturbing, and yet this can be a relief in an
age when the music industry is turning more and more towards a sickly
sweetness in performance fashions without much individuality, or a digital
exactness that becomes positively boring after the first five minutes. Other
giants of the first half of the century (I refer here to Busoni, Hofman,
Schnabel, Moiseiwitsch, Cortot, or Rachmaninoff to name a few) did not
pander to the fashionable public taste of the day; they adopted a new
aesthetic approach.
What has always intrigued me is the manner in which Horowitz could,
almost by illusion - either by the use of the pedals, accentuations or using the
acoustics of the hall and the instrument - make his legato sound as if it were
created by non-legato, portato attacks, which in fact was according to Busoni,
the basis of piano playing. (Busoni considered all legato to be an acoustic
illusion.) With Horowitz it is what happens between the notes that is more
important than the commencement of each tone. He once said that he was
more concerned by how the notes came up than by how they went down.
This, in combination with the dynamic tensions created by his use of the
pedals, gives a tremendous potential for colour and contrast within passages
in which the pedal was released from duty.
During a meeting with Horowitz he told me that he regretted never having
heard Busoni in a live performance, I sometimes wonder how close they were
in pianistic practise.
My interest in the phenomenon of Horowitz has, over the years, led
me to make a careful study of several of his idols. The influence of Toscanini,
constantly imploring the orchestra to sing, must have been from his early
years very strong. Horowitz wanted above all to let the piano sing and in fact
managed to do this in a new way. He often mentioned the old legendary
singers, the bel canto singers at the turn of the century, as being the
strongest influence in the development of his style. One in particular who is
especially important for an understanding of Horowitz's and for any in-depth
study of interpretation during the last hundred years, is the baritone Mattias
Battistini (1856-1928). Fortunately for posterity, he left many intriguing
recordings, giving us a last glimpse of the bel canto style at the end of the
nineteenth century. It is a pity that singers like for instance Tetrazzini,
Rethberg, Lehmann and De Lucia amongst several others, are no longer
seriously studied. Yet they were all very close to the melodic style of the
composers we attempt to represent.
What is his connection with the great bel canto singers? One element is the
art of making diminuendos follow the expiring of the breath, making and
retaining an impetus or impulse moment within the phrase. The ability to let
this impetus continue over a complete phrase (a pianistic releasing of the
breath) during a series of measures before a new impulse moment was
made, the pillars and arches of musical architecture. This can be studied in a
number of Horowitz recordings: for example, the Czerny Variations from the
forties, several of the Haydn and Mozart Sonatas, the early Schubert B-flat
major Sonata, several Schumann recordings and the Bach/Busoni Chorales.
Another study can be made of the ways in which he sustained long notes and
make large groups within phrases, one of the best ways to separate the great
from the lesser Gods….All this can be heard in Battistini.
Indeed Horowitz was most daring in the way in which he really made
long groups of notes, even whole phrases which I mentioned with regard to
his recordings of the Mozart and Haydn sonatas: nowadays unfortunately
unfashionable! Many performers today tend to give a more digital vertical
clarity to each note, even at times sounding close to a typewriter. It is the
element of illusion in his cantabile touch and the dialogue he produced and
developed between phrases which, for me, constitute the basic style and
personality so characteristic of Horowitz.
I will never forget a performance he gave of the Mozart Sonata in Bflat KV 333. It was monumental in its scope and design, producing a sound as
if orchestrated with horns in the last movement and with a unique sense of
timing. When I spoke to Horowitz after the recital he asked me what I had
heard and thought so I mentioned to him several things that had stood out for
me. His sense of dialogue in the first movement, the most sustained second
movement and the orchestral/vocal sound he created throughout all
movements, all this showing an incredible understanding of the proportions of
the work. A truly orchestral architecture. His eyes opened widely, lit up and he
explained his approach to the interpretation whereby he created a sense of
"opera," each theme being a character in the drama. We spoke further about
this interpretation but also several questions of tonal colour, pianistic
orchestration and his architectural view of a complete sonata. It showed how
much consideration went into each performance, a performance that sounded
as if created at the moment was in fact prepared in very great detail.
Some pianists are able to make the audience breath with the
cadence of the playing, even members of the audience with no special
musical knowledge are subconsciously captivated. It's most fascinating just
watching the reactions of an audience during his recital. I believe that
Horowitz makes use of this energy during his performances, which helped
make them so "electric." Horowitz, of course, was not the only pianist to
achieve this feeling, I have sensed the same in live performances by masters
such as Moiesewitsch, Horszowski and Richter. But the way in which it
occurred with Horowitz made time appear to stand still. I have noticed that the
effect is harder to achieve in smaller halls or studios. Bring an interpretation
by Horowitz into a small auditorium, and the sound will inevitably be altered
and most certainly distorted as it has been in many of his studio recordings,
some show Horowitz as excessive in his interpretations, bringing out the less
good points. I wonder whether these less distinguished recordings will stand
the test of time. Certainly they will not help future generations to understand
the impact of what a live Horowitz recital could be.