Customer Reviews

Horowitz: Legendary RCA Recordings

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RCA has been digging through their vaults during the Horowitz centennial year, and they've come up with some treasures.

The Tchaikovsky First Concerto presented here, from 1941, was a best seller in its day and has retained its legendary status. Toscanini draws first class playing from his orchestra, and despite Horowitz's superstar status, it's clearly the conductor who's calling the interpretive shots. Toscanini considered his son in law to be the world's greatest pianist, and listening to this recording, it's easy to understand why. Horowitz's contribution includes stupendous, sizzling octaves, ferocious excitement, and a sensitively phrased second movement. Although there are other versions of this concerto which offer greater musical nourishment (including a Horowitz recording with Szell from 1953), this remains the most viscerally exciting Tchaikovsky First on disc.

Vladimir Horowitz made three "official" recordings of Rachmaninoff's formidable Third Concerto. There are wonderful things in the 1930 recording with Coates, but that performance was severely cut. The 1978 version with Ormandy is also marvelous in its own way, but this 1951 studio recording with Reiner was Horowitz's high water mark in this piece. From the beautiful chord weighting of the first movement to the knife-edge staccato in the Finale, Horowitz is simply untouchable. There are a few cuts here, but not as severe as the version with Coates or Rachmaninoff's 1939 recording with Ormandy. Reiner is a sympathetic collaborator and draws some virtuoso playing from the pickup orchestra. The recording balance favors the piano, but Horowitz's dazzling virtuosity and clarity deserve to be highlighted. On the whole, this is my favorite Rachmaninoff Third on CD. The G major prelude, recorded in 1977, is more lovingly played here than the more casual 1986 version recorded in Moscow.

Disc 2 comprises solo works with which Horowitz was identified.
More of Horowitz's recordings are devoted to Chopin than any other composer. He performed the Polonaise-Fantasy in concert back when most pianists were loath to perform such an abstract work. This live 1951 performance tends to be harsh and over-driven, and lacks the poetry and cohesion of his later 1966 concert performance. Both the Mazurka and Nocturne feature flexible tempos and sensitive phrasing.

Scriabin, once called the "Russian Chopin," also features prominently in Horowitz's repertoire. The four pieces here are played with the sensuality and demonism that the music demands, but seldom receives. Somewhat less successful is Liszt's Mephisto Waltz (recorded in concert in 1979): demonic it is, but with many technical baubles.

Until his 1953 retirement, Horowitz was one of the foremost exponents of 20th Century repertoire. He gave the US premieres of Prokofiev's "War" Sonatas, and the World premiere of Barber's Sonata. The stunning, driven performance of the Prokofiev Toccata is contrasted with the elegant, witty playing of Poulenc's Presto.

The Clementi, Schumann, and Bizet pieces are wonderful examples of Horowitz doing what he did best, tossing off piano music with electric elegance, and the occasional bit of divine madness.

This new remastering by Jon Samuels is a considerable improvement over RCA's earlier transfers. The fact that RCA continues to reissue Horowitz material 14 years after his death, demonstrates that the demand for his unique brand of piano playing exists. RCA should have Mr. Samuels remaster their entire Horowitz catalogue and give the Horowitz legacy the red carpet treatment it deserves.

Those of us who were fortunate to SEE as well as hear pianist Vladimir Horowitz perform in concert will long remember the quiet, nervous, and rather timid man who slowly walked on the stage. When I saw him at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland in 1978, he hadn't played on the West Coast in many years. Actually, Horowitz was absent from concert halls for years, only making recordings, either for RCA Victor or Columbia.

His Oakland appearance was recorded by RCA and portions of the concert were included in the commercial releases; the engineers would take the best from various performances and cleverly edit them together to give a strong performance. Actually, Horowitz was absolutely dazzling once he sat down at the piano. Despite the initial tentative appearance, he really came to life when he began to play. He was a living legend by 1978 and he did not disappoint the audience. Fortunately, recordings such as those included in this two-CD set give excellent examples of his virtuoso playing.

The 1941 recording session of Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto was made in Carnegie Hall with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Horowitz's father-in-law, Arturo Toscanini. Yes, Horowitz had married Wanda Toscanini. One wonders what Toscanini thought about having Horowitz in his family. It's clear, however, the Toscanini and Horowitz had great respect for each other and they worked well together. This is quite apparent in this celebrated, very popular recording, originally issued on 78-rpm discs.

By 1941 RCA Victor had reached a new standard in high fidelity, which was only limited by the surface noise of the shellac discs. This digital remastering has reduced the noise slightly while maintaining as much of the fidelity as possible. The performance is very exciting throughout. Given the difficulty of the solo passages, it is amazing how well Horowitz played this music. Toscanini, who only occasionally conducted the music of Tchaikovsky, saw to it that the NBC Symphony provided strong accompaniment throughout. The memorable orchestral interlude in the first movement is especially dramatic and powerful. An interesting comparison is Horowitz's live concert performance (also in Carnegie Hall) with Toscanini and the NBC Symphony from 1943, also released by RCA Victor; that performance is more "fluid" and there is one section in the second movement where Horowitz and the orchestra got a little "out of synch" for a few moments.

Just ten years later, Horowitz recorded Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto with a "pick-up" orchestra of New York musicians conducted by Fritz Reiner. This was recorded in Carnegie Hall on magnetic tape and the sound is much improved. The performance was the second of three recordings that Horowitz made of the concerto and it may be the best of them. Certainly Rachmaninoff himself had admired Horowitz's performances of his music and this clearly demonstrates why.

The other disc includes numerous shorter works, all briliantly played and all evidence of the wonderful playing of Horowitz. Some of them are taken from live performances and have the extra value of showing how well Horowitz played in concert. A special treat is Horowitz's popular arrangement of music from Georges Bizet's "Carmen," one of the most dazzling pieces the pianist ever played. I also enjoyed his fiery performance of Lizst's "Mephisto Waltz," clearly a devilish piece inspired by part of the Faust legend.

This is a wonderful compilation and a good introduction to the excellent playing of Vladimir Horowitz.

Drake, the reviewer above or below this review, made me purchase this CD ... I advice you to do the same.

The two major concertos on the first disc were for me the main attractions, and they do not disappoint. The Rach 3rd especially is a must in your collection. It's indeed the one with Reiner (the most praised of all the Horowitz readings).

Disc two is filled with, mostly, goodies; moreover, disc one and two combined are together a nice introduction to Horowitz the Pianist.

Although the Tchaikovsky is "viscerally exciting" as one reviewer put it, it is unfortunately much too fast. While Horowitz certainly has the technical skills to pull this off, some of the grandeur of this concerto is lost along the way. It's too bad they couldn't instead have included Horowitz's incredible 1943 performance (also with Toscanini) of the concerto, which has all of the power and none of the rushing.

The second half of the first CD is an incredible performance of Rachmaninoff's 3rd concerto, somehow managing to contain both the power and grandeur of that work. The only flaw is a sound which (like in Cliburn's recording of the Rach 2 with Reiner) lacks a bit at times in terms of balance.

The second disk is a similar mixed bag, with both high points (the Rachmaninoff G-Major prelude is just gorgeous) and lows (I'm not a big fan of the Mephisto Waltz as recorded here). Nevertheless, there's certainly more than $17.98 worth of 5-star music on this set, so I conder it worth a 5-star rating.

This set includes numerous staples of Horowitz's repertoire, most formidably the two concertos, complimented by the three Chopin pieces, Traumerei, Etincelles, and the Rachmaninoff prelude. It also includes three relatively unplayed composers whose music Horowitz championed: Clementi, Poulenc and Scarlatti. Other less publicly-performed pieces in Horowitz's repertoire are included on this disc, the Scriaban pieces, Horowitz's own arrangement of Bizet's Carmen, the Prokofiev Toccata and the Mephisto Waltz.

The two concerto recordings are quite possibly the best ones of the respective pieces, except for Cliburn's Tchaikovsky concerto performance in 1958. The piano sounds almost metallic in the Polonaise-Fantaisie, a fault of RCA's. Most everything else on the second disc is flawless, excluding the Mephisto Waltz. Horowitz is widely acclaimed to bring the most tones out of the piano, but, in the Mephisto Waltz, there are lots of places where the tone is simply . . . bad. It is labeled as "Horowitz's retouching of the Busoni transcription". I, first of all, do not even agree with most of the Busoni transcription, and, as a result, do not agree at all with Horowitz's interpretation. In my opinion, Cliburn's and Kapell's versions are far superior.

So, buy the disc for the well-known Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, and Prokofiev, and the lesser-known Poulenc, Clementi and Scarlatti. Do not listen to the Mephisto Waltz! In fact, the first time I heard it I screamed out, "What were you thinking!?".
But maybe I am a little uptight about these sorts of things.

This cd is one of the best Horowitz compilations that exists. It is indeed Legendary. The recording of the Rach 3 here is the top, greatest reading of the piece, how Rachmaninoff himself would have approved. The Tchaikovsky with Toscanini is my favorite, even though Horowitz does not take many chances in tempo and whatnot because, afterall, he was playing with his great, fiery-tempered father-in-law. Now, on to the second disk. Despite what some people say about the Polonaise-Fantaisie, I believe it is a great reading, and Horowitz never drags the tempo like Ashkenazy often does. The Mazurka is beautiful indeed (the 1965 version is better) and the forever famous Nocturne can bother people who are used to Rubinstein's interpretation. The reading of the Nocturne is somewhat like Cortot's - different. The schumann Traumerei is beautifully done (it was toped, however, by the version in Horowitz in Moscow). The Scriabin preludes are full of color, but what really is fascinating is the Etude op.8 no.12 (not op. 18, as the cd cover says). This version is slower than Horowitz's usual tempo, and there are finger slips and mistakes. There are some "neurotic" sections, and all this is explained by the fact that Horowitz, at the time, was going through a period of uncertainty and failure, I guess you could say, because of all the medicine he was taking. It is, however, beautiful instead of powerful, and Horowitz is in control. The favorite encores Etincelles and Carmen variations are excellent, and the Rachmaninoff prelude is the most beautiful, deep, and searching reading I have ever heard. The Mephisto Waltz is a showpiece, and Horowitz plays it like it is intended to be, a little out of control in some places however.

Overall, this is an excellent 2-cd compilation. BUY IT!

Others have ably commented on the artistic aspects of this set, so I will confine my remarks to another sphere. My primary motivation for acquiring these CDs was to revisit Horowitz' performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1, a reading I first heard on 78s many years ago. This recording was made in 1941, eons before stereo, ages before the advent of tape recording, so I did not expect a sensuous treat bathing my ears with presence, wide dynamic range and the full spectrum of audible sound; however, I did expect the producers to include liner notes worthy of Horowitz and self-proclaimed Legendary RCA Recordings. They did not, opting merely for a mundane recitation of composer, title, orchestra, conductor and year of recording -- without even bothering to mention which of the selections were recorded monaurally and which stereophonically, or, for that matter, which are ADD and which are DDD. The rear of the slipcase helpfully informed me that the pieces were recorded between 1941 and 1982, and that some are mono, others stereo; some ADD, others DDD. One is to guess, I presume.

Although just ten years separates Horowitz' recording of the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff concertos, the pair might just as well be Mars and Earth when judged from a purely technical viewpoint. The Tchaikovsky is Mars: flat, sonically pockmarked by undesired frequency modulation, airless in dynamic range. The Rachmaninoff is Earth: airy and spacious, mountainous and yet fluid, alternately whispering and shouting. A revolution in recording technology occurred in the decade separating these recordings. What in 1941 was a purely mechanical, and therefore uneditable, monaural process became the basis of what is routine today: in 1951 sound could be captured by microphones, routed to amplifiers and then fixed onto an editable medium offering wide dynamic range with a high signal-to-noise ratio. I cannot imagine a more fitting pair of recordings to illustrate the vast differences between the two technologies -- but, sadly, opportunity's knock went unanswered.

BMG, heir to the RCA Red Seal catalog, does include three pages of notes and commentary about Horowitz, but few of the reviewer's remarks seem insightful, perhaps because so much of the information rehashes details readily found elsewhere. I had hoped to discover information about the recording techniques originally used to fix the incomparable artistry of Vladimir Horowitz into a physical medium -- but no, not a word. Pictures of the equipment used -- the direct-to-shellac cutter presumbly used in the 1941 Tchaikovsky and tape recorder presumably used in the 1951 Rachmaninoff -- would have helped me visualize the seismic shift in technology that led to the richness of today's music -- but nothing is illustrated, save for one photo of Horowitz playing a piano with an RCA Victor microphone in the foreground, date unspecified.

To their credit, BMG ably transferred the (shellac?) master from the 1941 piece to digital media, although no one at the company apparently cared enough about the process to help a discerning audience understand more about it. BMG is a conglomerate that primarily doles out pop music for the gratification of children, so their inattention to detail is perhaps understandable. In contrast, DG usually provides extensive technical information and richer, more informative liner content, particularly on their DSDs and SACDs. For example, the Karajan Gold series from DG does justice in some measure to proprietary remastering techniques.

I would unhesitatingly give five stars to Horowitz for peerless artistic mastery, four to BMG's engineers for rescuing as much of the original performance as they did -- oh, to have been in the studio that day! -- but only two for BMG's inexplicable failure to present any details of a momentous technical achievement. In that award, I am being generous because BMG has done far better with other releases. Their digitally-remastered Living Stereo album, "Heifetz Double Concertos" (RCA catalog number 09026-63531) contains two pages of explanatory notes and pictures of the equipment used in 1953, 1955 and 1958 -- RCA's tentative forays into the binaural and stereophonic era.