February 25, 1953

When Vladimir Horowitz stepped onto the stage at Carnegie Hall on February 25, 1953, no one knew it would be his last public performance for over 12 years.  Instead, it was to be a celebratory occasion: the Silver Jubilee recital commemorating 25 years since his United States debut.  Horowitz’s record label, RCA Red Seal, was on hand to document the event, which was duly issued as a two-LP set. 

The "Actual Recording"?  Not entirely...

Not the actual program cover

It must be pointed out that there are numerous differences between the recital, as performed, and RCA’s release – billed as the “Actual Recording” of the concert.  First, three works were omitted from the album: Brahms’ Rhapsody, Op.119, No. 4; Debussy’s Little Shepherd, from the Children’s Corner suite, and Clementi’s Rondo in in B-flat major, Op. 24, No. 2.  Further, Debussy’s Serenade to the Doll was moved from its place in the program and used as an encore.  Even the lavish booklet which accompanied the album, made to appear as if it was a program book from the concert, was altered to accommodate the changes.  Substantially, several aspects of the performance were edited, most notably in Schubert’s B-flat major Sonata, D. 960. Comparison with the unedited concert recording, copies of which circulated privately for decades before it was released by Sony Classical (superbly remastered by Jon Samuels) in 2013, results in the question: What possessed Horowitz (who was closely involved in the editing process) and RCA to make these changes?  The musical differences are minor and technical fluffs in the unedited original barely detectable.  Further, the poor quality of the splices themselves, with noticeable shifts in pitch and the rumbling subway underneath Carnegie Hall suddenly appearing and disappearing, is distracting to the musical experience.  For the purposes of this essay, I am referencing the original, unedited recording of the February 25^th concert, including the works deleted from the official release.

The Brahms Rhapsody starts with several nerve-induced missed notes before settling down to a rendition notable for the pianist’s refusal to rely on the sustaining pedal.  Sections which too often are blurred and indistinct emerge with clarity here.  Yet the performance is dutiful rather than joyous, and one is not surprised to learn that this was Horowitz’s last public performance of any work by Brahms.

Horowitz’s rendition of Schubert’s final piano sonata was widely criticized when initially heard.  Listening with fresh ears through the perspective of time, one finds little that is objectionable to the open minded.  Tempi do not stray far from the established norms – yet the pianist finds something fresh in a work that has become overly familiar.  Horowitz does not observe the first movement repeat - few did at the time.  He strips from his performance aspects which had become traditional but were unspecified in the score, such as the oft-heard ritardando at bars 73-75.  The pianist’s sparing use of the sustaining pedal ensures textures are clear, yet he still achieves many subtle colorations.  The second movement, a true Andante, gels in a way that Horowitz’s 1986 studio recording does not - it is profound without being portentous.  The Scherzo - with the trio’s off-beat pizzicato accents - has a humor too often missing from pianists trying to make the music seem like proto-Mahler.  It’s only in the final movement where Horowitz’s playing becomes too large-scaled and Lisztian for some tastes – but one can understand the pianist’s desire to project the work in a manner suited to a modern concert hall instead of a 19^th Century Schubertiade.  In the final analysis, this performance of Schubert’s last Sonata is neither Horowitzian nor Lisztian, but strongly architectonic in the spirit of Toscanini.

It was a rare Horowitz recital that did not include works by Chopin, and the Silver Jubilee was no exception.  The pianist made several recordings of the Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72, No. 1, both studio and live.  As with the others, this rendition is a bit more intense than standard performances, with a sense of menace brewing underneath the left-hand accompaniment – further emphasized by Horowitz’s occasional extensions of bass notes.

Intensity and Chopin’s Scherzo in B minor, Op. 20 go hand-in-hand – and this is easily the most enervated of Horowitz’s many recordings of the work.  Tempos start fairly normally, but by the first repetition of the main theme the pianist hits the accelerator and doesn’t look back – leading to a few frantic moments where he teeters on the edge of catastrophe.  The central section goes a bit cavalierly, lacking the hushed reverence Chopin intended for this adaptation of the Polish Christmas carol Lulajże Jezuniu.  Then Horowitz takes off again driving the work toward a coda that must have left the keys smoking.   

Nor is intensity lacking in the performance of Scriabin’s “Black Mass” Sonata that followed intermission.  The 1953 audience must have been shocked by what was then an unfamiliar work to most American music lovers.  For all the talk, including from the pianist himself, about Horowitz’s 1953 rendition being “too fast”, the performance convinces the listener that this is a well-structured composition – giving the lie to Aaron Copland’s assertion that Scriabin’s late piano sonatas were one of the great mistakes of the piano literature.  Even in this 1953 version, Horowitz holds his powers in reserve until he reaches the work’s climax, which under the pianist’s hands is truly satanic.  

The two Scriabin Etudes which follow (B-flat minor, Op. 8, No. 11; C-sharp minor, Op. 42, No. 5) provide ample contrast to each other and to the Sonata.  The B-flat minor Etude is primarily lyrical, with a bit more turbulence in the recapitulation than heard in later live performances (preserved on pirate recordings) and the 1972 studio recording by the pianist.  The work ends in a pianissimo as only Horowitz could make.  The C-sharp minor Etude, a beast to play, is akin to navigating a boat in stormy waters.  The pianist amply pulls and pushes the phrasing and tempo until the repetition of the main theme half-way through the piece, where he pulls out the stops.   

The recital included two excerpts from Debussy’s Children’s Corner Suite: The Little Shepherd and Serenade to the Doll (the latter was a frequent encore).  Horowitz apparently never performed the complete suite in public, unfortunately.  In this concert, the excerpts are apparently placed as a “breather” between the Scriabin and Liszt.  The Little Shepherd includes a very minor memory lapse which is likely the reason it was not included in the original album.  (Horowitz’s musical memory, while formidable, was hardly infallible, with recorded memory lapses as far back as his 1930 Rachmaninoff Third Concerto with Coates, contradicting the notion that electroshock treatments during the early 1960s and 1970s were the cause of memory lapses in subsequent years.)

Horowitz is on record as describing his arrangement of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody as the most difficult he ever performed, eclipsing even the Rákóczy March.  The pianist sticks closely to the original during the lassan – which is justly paced and performed without the excessive schmaltz one often encounters.  The friska is a demonstration of how Horowitz was able to build tension and volume without covering up with the pedal.  In addition to the high-wire excitement generated, the pianistic gymnastics are superbly controlled and always musical – particularly when the pianist combines three themes into a contrapuntal tour-de-force.  This is not the playing of a man on the edge of a breakdown, but an example of stellar pianistic and musical control.  (It must be mentioned here that attempts by several pianists to play this arrangement have met with varying levels of success and failure, but none have come close to scaling the heights as Horowitz did here.)  

Throughout his career, Horowitz invariably performed a quiet, contemplative piece for his first encore, allowing the audience to “come down” from the high generated by the program closer. 

Chopin’s Waltz in A minor Op. 34, No. 2 – the composer’s favorite – is given a quietly poetic performance that deftly balances melody with inner voices, the final bars fading away as Chopin must have intended.  

The Clementi Rondo, Op. 24, No. 2 was not included in the original release.  I can find nothing in the performance that merits its exclusion, and can only conclude it was excised to avoid duplication with the pianist’s 1950 studio recording of the work.  The live performance here is even more pointed, sparsely pedaled, and witty – demonstrating that Horowitz continually found new aspects of works within his repertoire.

Horowitz’s last encore for twelve years was the finale from Prokofiev’s Sonata, Op. 83, a study in motoric music.  It starts much as his 1945 studio recording, at a sensible tempo and dynamics held in check.  As he approaches the coda he begins rushing the rapid chords in the upper-register, making the conclusion sound frantic in place of his granitic studio recording.  The work’s final descending then ascending octaves bring a roar from the audience, but as with the Brahms that started this recital, this was the last time Horowitz played the music of this composer in public.

For everything Horowitz, visit Vladimir Horowitz Appreciation Society, the internet’s premiere curated Horowitz site.