Vladimir Horowitz - Biography
Vladimir Horowitz perhaps the most famous pianist of the 20th Century was born October 1st 1903 in Kiev Ukraine which was then part of Russia and died in New York on November 5th 1989. Vladimir Horowitz was born into an upper middleclass Jewish family his father was a merchant, his mother a concert pianist. His initial instruction came from his mother. He later attended the Kiev Conservatory where his teachers were Sergei Tarnowski and Felix Blumenfield. When he graduated in 1919 he played the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto # 3 a piece that would be associated with him for the rest of his life. Horowitz performed during the hectic period of post revolutionary Russia. But in 1925 he left for Paris. He became a sensation in Paris (Artur Rubinstein sixteen years older confided in his Autobiography that he felt like quitting his career after he had heard him). In 1928 he had his American debut at Carnegie Hall with First Piano Concerto of Tchaikovsky and even though during the finale he was playing faster than the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham and the orchestra the audience was wildly enthusiastic.
Horowitz during the 1930’s consolidated his position as one of the world’s great virtuosos. He became close friends with his hero Sergei Rachmaninoff and started collaborating with the great conductor Toscanini. In 1933 he married Toscanini’s daughter Wanda with whom he was to be with until his death 56 years later. Horowitz was a masterful performer of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and an incomparable interpreter of the late Romantic Russian Scriabin. With Europe closed off by the Second World War he became the biggest classical concert draw in America. He made a famous recording of the Brahms Second Piano Concerto in 1940 and two spectacular recordings of the Tchaikovsky First all with his father in law Toscanini (the second Tchaikovsky a live performance even more spectacular then the first). Horowitz also championed contemporary music that he was in sympathy with like Prokofiev and Poulenc. He also was to commission and record a Piano Sonata by Samuel Barber. He also delighted audiences with his pyrotechnical variations of Stars and Stripes Forever and Carmen that he would play as encores. There was to be push back from intellectual critics like B.H. Haggin of the Nation and Virgil Thomson of the New York Herald Tribune who felt that Horowitz’s interpretations were distortions of the composers intention and that he played very little Mozart or Beethoven(Horowitz admitted that he wasn’t temperamentally suited for some of the German Classical Repertoire). While he thrilled most with his performances of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition he was criticized by some for cutting and editing the piece to show off his technique.
The strain of keeping up a demanding schedule where he had to live up to an impossible standard took a toll on this very sensitive and highly strung man and in 1953 he withdrew from public performing. He was soon to fall into a deep clinical depression and had to be hospitalized and receive electro shock therapy. One is reluctant to bring up sexual matters in an assessment of an artist’s worth but Horowitz was to admit later in life that his guilt over being primarily oriented to being gay while being a married father (to a daughter Sonia who was to live a troubled short life and was to die of a drug overdose in 1975) caused him great emotional pain and partially was responsible for his metal collapse. He was not to perform again in public for twelve years. Since his illness and inactivity was putting great strain on his finances he made occasional recordings and sold much of his valuable art collection. In 1962 he changed his label affiliation from RCA to Sony. In the fall of 1965 he announced a public concert at Carnegie Hall. A few hours after the announcement lines formed around the block from Carnegie, Wanda Horowitz even had coffee brought to fans that stood in line all night. The concert was a sensation and the live recording of the concert was a best seller. He performed for a few more years even including a nationally broadcast television concert in 1968 but a year later he had to again withdraw from performing for five years. Luckily he continued to make recordings during this period (even for non Horowitz fan’s his recording of Schumann’s Kreisleriana is something special). In the mid seventies he went back to recording for RCA for the first time in some of these recordings often of live events there are traces of technical insecurity. One sensational event was a live performance in the White House in 1978 broadcast on PBS (Jimmy Carter unlike most President’s is a classical music fan). He also performed and recorded the Rachmaninoff Third live in New York with Eugene Ormandy. Strangely enough he was a big fan of Disco and was a regular customer of Studio 54 where the site of an elderly man in a formal suit with a bow tie dancing away the night must have been a bizarre site.
Horowitz had one mere short withdrawal from live performing while he weaned himself off of anti-depressants which he blamed for his recent technical problems. It was assumed that now nearing eighty his career was over but he signed with Deutsche Gramophone with who he was to make a series of best selling recordings. The most famous of which was Horowitz in Moscow which documents his return to Russia after sixty years (that was also a live CBS Sunday Morning Special with Charles Kuralt). His meeting with the daughter of Scriabin is particularly moving. Horowitz was to continue to perform live until 1987. He was still recording and even contemplates returning to the stage when he suddenly died of a heart seizure at 86 on November 5TH 1989. His death was announced on most of the front pages of the world. A moving tribute to Wanda Horowitz was sent by Leonard Bernstein where he honored her for taking care of and standing by the fragile genius that was Vladimir Horowitz.
Horowitz has still maintained his popularity many years after his death and still has his minority of detractors. We have a treasure of recordings that stretch nearly sixty years and a few DVD’S that capture some the tremendous excitement of seeing Horowitz live. It is astonishing to see this man create torrents of sounds without raising his hands more than a few inches off the keyboard and barely moving a facial muscle.
