The Historic Return: Carnegie Hall 1965; The 1966 Concerts

Johann Sebastian Bach (Composer), Robert Schumann (Composer), Alexander Scriabin (Composer), Frederic Chopin (Composer), Claude Debussy (Composer), Moritz Moszkowski (Composer), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Composer), Franz Joseph Haydn (Composer), Ferruccio Busoni (Composer), Franz Liszt (Composer), Vladimir Horowitz (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Vladimir Horowitz
• Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, Alexander Scriabin, Frederic Chopin, Claude Debussy, et al.
• Audio CD (June 14, 1994)
• Number of Discs: 3
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B00000290C
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #268,539 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Toccatas, transcriptions (2) for piano in D minor & C major (BWV 564/565; BBGA 7/3), KiV B29: 1. Preludio, quasi improvvisando. Tempo

2. Toccatas, transcriptions (2) for piano in D minor & C major (BWV 564/565; BBGA 7/3), KiV B29: 2. Intermezzo. Adagio

3. Toccatas, transcriptions (2) for piano in D minor & C major (BWV 564/565; BBGA 7/3), KiV B29: 3. Fuga. Moderamente scherzando, un poc

4. Fantasie (Obolen auf Beethovens Monument) for piano in C major, Op. 17: 1. Durchaus phantastisch und leidenschaftlich vorzutragen

5. Fantasie (Obolen auf Beethovens Monument) for piano in C major, Op. 17: 2. Mäßig. Durchaus energisch

6. Fantasie (Obolen auf Beethovens Monument) for piano in C major, Op. 17: 3. Langsam getragen. Durchweg leise zu halten

See all 8 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Mazurka for piano No. 21 in C sharp minor, Op. 30/4, CT. 71

2. Etude for piano No. 8 in F major, Op. 10/8, CT. 21

3. Ballade for piano No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23, CT. 2

4. Serenade for the doll, for piano (Children's Corner No. 3), L. 113/3

5. Etude for piano in C sharp minor, Op. 2/1

6. Etude for piano in A flat major, Op. 72/11

See all 11 tracks on this disc

Disc: 3

1. Mazurka for piano No. 25 in B minor, Op. 33/4, CT. 75

2. Nocturne for piano No. 19 in E minor, Op. 72/1, CT. 126

3. Piano Sonata No. 10 ('Trill'), Op. 70

4. Keyboard Sonata in F major, H. 16/23: 1. Allegro

5. Keyboard Sonata in F major, H. 16/23: 2. Adagio

6. Keyboard Sonata in F major, H. 16/23: 3. Finale. Presto

See all 9 tracks on this disc

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gigantic recording, February 20, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Historic Return: Carnegie Hall 1965; The 1966 Concerts (Audio CD)

There's an interesting debate going on in the reviews below about Horowitz's technical and musical ability in general. Do yourself a favor and read through these reviews. It'll show you that Horowitz's ability to engender strong positions and fairly heated exchanges continues undiminished, more than eleven years after his death. What this proves, of course, is his uniquely important position in 20th century piano playing. No other classical pianist was as influential, no one's style was copied as much, no one was as frequently and thoroughly misunderstood (mere technician, mere dazzler, mere showman). What you have to understand in listening to these recordings is that he was a complete professional, totally devoted to his craft to the exclusion of just about any other interests in his life - a tremendously one-sided person. But within the art of piano playing he reigned supreme. His oddly introverted, unmoveable, purely efficiency-oriented appearance during performance (he never moved anythying but his hands - no facial contortions, no head shakes, no swaying body, and even his hands were super-efficient) contrasted oddly with the extreme extrovertedness of his playing. He knew so much more about the sound possibilities of the instrument than anyone else that listening to him was downright frightening for other pianists. I remember a well-known pianist during intermission at a Horowitz recital in Hamburg in 1986 laughing and crying at the same time, shaking his head and saying over and over again, "it's impossible. That was impossible. That can't be done" (he was talking about Horowitz's rendition of a Schubert-Liszt transacription).

Anyway, his mastery of the instrument far beyond all other humans' capacity has persistently clouded people's perception of Horowitz and made an assessment of his artistic merits much more difficult. Undoubtedly he had clear limitations as an artist (Beethoven, for example, was just not part of his artistc world). But we have to keep in mind that, unlike practically all classical musicians today, who are trained to be universalists and to assemble a vast variety of styles, Horowitz came out of a strong and idiosyncratic musical tradition - that of Scriabin and Rachmaninov. That tradition was his world, his artistic home, and he always explored other musical traditions from the vantage point of his particular musical identity. In all of this he proved extremely flexible (playing, for example, Scarlatti, Clementi and Czerny to great critical acclaim), but since he never aspired to neutrality and objectivity (like, for example, Pollini or Arrau), it always was obvious when he played music that didn't fit with who he was.

So the debate about Horowitz's musical merits that goes on in the reviews below is as old as his career. What's curious, though, is that a couple of reviewers believe to have found TECHNICAL shortcomings in his playing. That is new in Horowitz criticism. All his career he reigned as the supreme master of piano technique, acknowledged as such first and foremost by most famous pianists (Rubinstein, Argerich, Pollini, Perahia, and many others have rhapsodized - or expressed their jealousy - about Horowitz's technique publicly and at length). When speed and power decreased due to old age, he transferred his technical accomplishments to polyphony, to shadings, colors, multi-layered pianissimi unimagined before or after. In the present recordings from the mid-60s, there was no noticeable decrease in speed and power yet, but his development toward more sophisticated sound effects was well underway. In other words, the questioning of Horowitz's technical abilities in some of the reviews below is utter and complete nonsense. I can only surmise that the authors of these reviews are people raised on the bland, impersonal mechanical functioning displayed by so many contemporary pianists that Horowitz's edginess, his constantly going to extremes (of speed, of clarity, of softness, of bel canto, etc.) irritates them somehow. One thing Horowitz was never after was a polished surface. If you want pleasant, comforting stuff that you can play happily in the background while doing the dishes, Horowitz is not the artist for you. He demands total concentration. But he'll reward that concentration tenfold. Even if you don't agree or don't like what he does in a particular piece, you'll learn a ton about music listening to him. He's a very musically opinionated guy, and some of his work may irritate you a great deal, but he will never, ever bore you.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the great piano recordings of all time, December 8, 1999

By 

Hans U. Widmaier "Uli" (Elmhurst, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Historic Return: Carnegie Hall 1965; The 1966 Concerts (Audio CD)

In May 1965, Vladimir Horowitz, the greatest pianist of all time, ended a 13-year retirement and returned to Carnegie Hall. The audience contained many of the world's most famous musicians, and playing up to its frenzied expectations seemed impossible. Horowitz begins, tense to the breaking point. For a few seconds, his hands are out of control, and he hits more wrong notes than right ones. Then things settle a bit, and he starts to translate his tension into pure musical energy. In that first piece, the Bach-Busoni, Horowitz seems almost superhuman with his orchestral sound, his sharp rhythm, his alternatingly hard-edged attack and meltingly lyrical lines, his supreme intelligence. It must have been immensely frustrating for the pianists in the audience to be so rudely confronted with such hopeless pianistic superiority. The Bach is followed by a highly idiosyncratic Schumann Fantasy, where Horowitz shows a grasp of the work's structure and an analytic penetration of Schumann's neo-Bachian polyphony undreamt of by any interpreter before or after. The recital continues with musical and pianistic jaw-droppers. I single out the Chopin and Moszkovski Etudes, where the audience's incredulity at Horowitz's feats dissolves in laughter at the end of the pieces, the tenderness and intimacy of Debussy's Serenade for a Doll, and the truly moving Schumann Traeumerei. The remainder of this CD collection contains 1966 live recordings, many of which are as fascinating as the '65 concert. Particularly noteworthy are the Haydn Sonata for its dry wit, Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasie for the almost infinite range of expressions and emotions Horowitz creates, and Liszt's Vallee D'Obermann, which inspires Horowitz to the most atmospheric, most evocative music-making I have ever heard on a recording. In sum, if I knew I would lose my hearing in a few hours, I would spend them listening to these recordings.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How Live is Live?, November 28, 2003

By 

Hank Drake (Cleveland, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Historic Return: Carnegie Hall 1965; The 1966 Concerts (Audio CD)

This is not a review per se. My review is posted under the "Live and Unedited" version of the 1965 concert. But I wanted to correct a few errors which have been circulated in regard to this recording.

First, the corrections used on the original version of "Horowitz at Carnegie Hall" were not made at a "patch session at Carnegie a few days" after the concert. Columbia's engineers had already recorded Horowitz's rehearsals and used that material for the editing.

Second, the editing in the album was neither as extensive as some have suggested, nor as insignificant as others state.

Here is a (mostly) complete list of the patches on the original album, which have been removed from "Live and Unedited":

Bach-Busoni: Preludio: Measures 2-12 and parts of the coda (Horowitz, by the way, does not play the ossias at bars 8, 10, and 12); Intermezzo: Small patches at bars 7 and 11; Fugue: Several edits between bars 97 and 110, and again in the coda.

Schumann Fantasy: 1st Movement: patches at 7:32 and 10:21; 2nd Movement: small patches at 2:44 and 4:32, and a series of patches in the coda 6:58-7:39; 3rd Movement: No edits.

Scriabin: Sonata No 9: No Edits. Poem in F-sharp: Patch from 2:16-2:26

Chopin: Mazurka: Small edit at 2:02; Etude: Patched sections from 1:27-1:33 and 2:15-2:20; Ballade: Small edits at 2:04 and 4:52, at least four patches in the coda.

None of the encores were edited.

It should be pointed out that the editing of supposedly "live" recordings is more commonplace than the recording industry will admit. Although not generally aknowledged, Arthur Rubinstein's 1961 Carnegie Hall Highlights album was patched, and most live recordings today are actually compilations from several performances.

Whether you choose this patched version, or "Live and Unedited" the 1965 return concert contains some stunning piano playing. Can anyone imagine the pressure Horowitz was under on that day? To prove you have not just retained your original greatness, but have deepened and become even greater cannot have been easy. The new, unedited version of the concert is not a revelation, but serves as a reminder of Horowitz's all too human frailty.