Search - Frederic Chopin, Vladimir Horowitz :: Chopin: Piano Works

Off copyright RCA recordings, all charismatic

Santa Fe Listener | Santa Fe, NM USA | 12/16/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"According to Urania, this 80 min. CD collects almost all of Horowitz's live Chopin from 1945-53. My copy is a download, so unfortunately I can't supply specific dates. But the transfers are clean, and quite often the piano sound is surprisingly full and lifelike. Just as often, however, it is clear but boxy and constricted. The opening Polonaise-Fantasie brings the Horowitz style immediately to spine-tingling life -- his Chopin is phrased very freely, to say the least, and he turns regular beats into deceptive finger slips as he wanders spontaneously across the bar line. This combination of ultra control and unpredictability was a hallmark throughout Horowitz's career. There's a charismatic sparkle in his touch, and a certain willfulness. He'd be crushing rocks with his left hand while scattering pixie dust with his right. An innocent chord somehow turns into a frisson of dissonance, like being jabbed with a diamond stickpin. No one else can be spotted so immediately after only a bar or two.



Later in life, these qualities turned into mannerisms, to my ear at least. But here in his prime Horowitz was bigger than the music he played, and pianism was all about great personalities back then. Of course, he wasn't in reality bigger than any great composer, but Horowitz's cold yet impassioned brilliance overwhelmed his listeners. Sample the last half of the Andante Spianato and Grand Polonaise for a perfect example. It's as much Horowitz as it is Chopin, but with this kind of magnetism, the effect isn't vulgar or a betrayal of the score (not always true later on). Only the Ballade no. 4 is so arbitrary that it becomes a hodgepodge of virtuosic display absent any real music.



Horowitz would have his famous emotional crisis (i.e., nervous breakdown) in the Fifties and withdraw from the stage. By the time he returned, to enormous eclat, the grand personality pianist that he typified was obsolete. Music was no longer the plaything of a virtuoso's whims. But if you want to time travel back to Horowitz's last decade of glory (as I see it), this CD is indispensable. He would never again capture such flair and excitement."