Customer Reviews

Bach: English Suite; Chopin: Nocturnes; Beethoven: Sonata

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The English Suite No. 5 has always my favorite one in this set . And the version of Horskowski is deeply played . He goes to the roots , the essential nucleus of the work and offers us one of the most wisdom readings that I have ever heard before . The nuance and brightness of his playing is simply unique . He got so close to the cosmic levels of Rosalyn Tureck , or Tatiana Nikolayeva and Wanda Landowska who as you well know are the supreme Goddess in which state of art of Bach playing concerns .
In the other hand his Chopin is extraordinary dramatic , not romantic . He knows the real mood and never will allow a tearful note . His aristocratic playing makes the difference that makes the great difference.
His Beethoven performing is tastefully made . Horszkowski as Schnabel is not interested at all in the fireworks , just in the insights of the work .
Listen to M.H. you will get close to one of the last genius of the keyboard .
Pitifully there are actually so very few pianist who still keep that freshness , wide scope and rapture as these keyboard giants of the past . The majority seemed to get funn with the music , and this triviality weakens their recordings , loaded with engrossing technique but absolutely lacking of commitment for the spirit of the work behind the score.
What a pity for the rest of piano artisans, who are the great majority .

Mieczyslaw Horszowski lived to the age of 101 and enjoyed the longest career in the history of the performing arts. He never achieved, or aspired to, the notoriety of his friends Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz. But in his last decade, he became something of a cult figure, his performances and recordings sought out by those curious about this last link to the Golden Age of Piano Playing, and those simply wondering whether someone so elderly could still move his fingers.

As record producer Max Wilcox wrote, "the fact that his body is old is beside the point." Wilcox, who worked with Rubinstein, signed Horszowski to the Nonesuch label in the mid-1980s, and together they made four fine recordings. This one, from 1989, is the third of those four.

Horszowski plays Bach unapologetically on the piano and makes no attempt (ALA Glenn Gould) to make the instrument sound like a quasi-harpsichord. When appropriate, he uses a bit of pedal, and employs dynamics, and rubato. After hearing him play this piece live, in 1990, my piano teacher (who was a pupil of Schnabel) remarked, "he plays Bach in a way that would be considered old-fashioned, but it's very beautiful." It's truly a pity that Horszowski never recorded the Goldberg Variations.

Horszowski's Chopin is ravishing, as befits a fellow Pole--whose mother studied with Karl Mikuli, himself a pupil of Chopin. Sometimes referred to as a Romantic pianist, Horszowski is Classically oriented in all respects save two: his way of phrasing a group of notes as a singer would, and his de-emphasis of the bar line. His tempo in the popular E-flat Nocturne is a bit faster than usually heard--but matches Chopin's metronome marking.

Horszowski refuses to make Beethoven's Op. 10, No. 2 Sonata weightier than it is, but simply plays is as music. In his witty, quietly virtuosic way, he captures the spirit of the music better than many Beethoven "specialists."

Recorded at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music, where Horszowski taught for fifty years, the sound is clear, spacious, and natural.