It hardly seems twenty
years ago that I was watching, open-mouthed,
the television relay of Horowitz’s historic
return to Moscow. Though the present
film version has been readily available
over the years on video and then DVD
I purposely didn’t see it, preferring
to keep the event as a memory. For better
or worse I received a copy a few weeks
ago as a birthday present so now I have
been able to compare reality with the
cherished memory.
The memory was a very
vivid one, and for the most part everything
was exactly as I remembered it. Horowitz
immediately captivates the ear with
his floating tone and intimate sonorities
in the first of the Scarlatti sonatas,
he is his inimitable impish self in
the second and age has not robbed him
of his brilliance in the third. Also
exactly as I had remembered it is the
image of complete calm with which he
tackles even the most demanding pieces
later in the programme. A few shots
from a camera presumably hidden inside
the piano show just his face and shoulders,
with neither fingers nor keyboard. So
motionless is he, you would hardly believe
he is actually playing at all, let alone
music that calls for great virtuosity.
It’s all in the fingers, and makes an
interesting comparison with the recent
Michelangeli films from the early 1960s
which tell a similar tale.
But memory is curiously
selective. Glorious childhood rambles
through the woods are remembered without
the stinging-nettles, my first idyllic
camping holiday in Scotland at the age
of 8 is remembered without the clouds
of midges which beset me on later visits
and which must have been there really.
And so it is here. I remembered the
Scarlatti, the Rachmaninov, the Scriabin,
the Schubert/Liszt, the Liszt, the Chopin
and the first two encores. I could swear
the Rachmaninov Polka was not given
on the television but I do remember
him holding up three fingers to tell
the public they were going to get three
encores and no more. But when, after
the well-remembered Scarlatti, a Mozart
sonata began, my mind drew a complete
blank. Even as the performance began,
it struck no answering chord. And here,
alas, are the stinging-nettles and the
midges. While marvelling at Horowitz’s
lightness of touch, it’s just too rococo,
even flippant, to be taken seriously.
The Rachmaninov G major
prelude begins surprisingly aggressively
- I hadn’t remembered this either -
and achieves the serenity and poise
of the composer’s own version only later.
The G sharp minor is terrific although
perhaps only Rachmaninov himself is
able to tell us, in his playing, what
this mysterious, tormented piece cost
him to compose. In Scriabin Horowitz
is surely unassailable.
The other blank in
my memory was the Schubert Impromptu.
On Horowitz’s side, the composer’s 2/2
rather than 4/4 time signature would
seem to imply a faster tempo than we
usually hear, but gone is any trace
of Schubertian melancholy, its place
taken by the merely pretty and decorative.
I have had occasion to remark in other
reviews recently that an understanding
of Schubert is a post-war acquisition
and Horowitz learnt his trade long before
that. Quite frankly, I don’t think he
had the faintest idea what this music
was about.
Schubert seen through
Liszt’s eyes is a different matter and
the Viennese confectionery has superb
elegance and bonhomie. Liszt’s own Petrarch
Sonnet has all the passion and grand
manner required and his Chopin, apart
from a momentary technical lapse during
the Polonaise, is as richly communicative
as ever. Perhaps some earlier sound-only
recordings of these particular pieces
are finer still but it’s marvellous
actually to see him playing them.
Also well remembered
are the shots around the hall of members
of the public with tears dripping from
their eyes during the first encore,
"Traumerei". Beautiful as
the performance evidently is, there
must have been a special speaking quality
to his tone which does not entirely
survive mechanical reproduction. At
least Sony don’t repeat RAI’s mistake
of twenty years ago of attributing "Etincelles"
(scintillatingly played) to Mussorgsky!
The programme is extended
with some preliminary scenes – Horowitz’s
piano being packed for travel back in
New York, for example – and some snatches
of interviews during the interval, most
of it fairly inconsequential but again,
it’s nice to have a glimpse of the great
man offstage and to hear him speaking,
mainly in English, his heavily Russian
accent undiminished by the many years
of exile.
Am I dwelling more
on my memories than actually reviewing
the disc? Well, a DVD conserving a complete
concert by one of the greatest of all
pianists, with the added emotion of
his return to his homeland after 61
years, doesn’t need pushing from me.
I just want to make one last consideration.
My memory has been tested against the
documentary evidence and has proved
oddly selective. So what about pianists
from further back in the past, whom
we can only know through people’s memories
of them. Do these memories, too, exclude
the stinging-nettles and the midges?
Christopher Howell
see also review
by Jonathan Woolf
Vladimir
Horowitz (piano) 
SONY
SVD 64545 [104:00] 
