| ||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential Reading on Genius,
By
This review is from: Remembering Horowitz: 125 Pianists Recall a Legend (Paperback)
This is an amazing book!! Thank you, Mr. Dubal. This book is permanently on the table next to my favorite easy chair. Whenever I have a few minutes between this or that, I pick up Remembering Horowitz and dip into a different part. I must have read the entire book at least once and many parts several times already, but I will go back again and again and again. This book is a MUST BUY for anyone who has ever looked at a piano. I have taught piano for twenty years and played it for 35 years. And this book not only talks about Maestro Horowitz, but, in doing so, discusses the essence of the many facets of piano and music in general. Ultimately, the profound, beautiful, and insightful essays touch on all aspects of life and spirit, just as all great performances do. Notable are Seymour Bernstein's essay, for personal recollection and an essay on emulation and inspiration; Gary Graffman's memoir that is funny and urbane, in the style of his wonderful I SHOULD BE PRACTICING, his own memoir; and as a defense of Horowitz's showy side, Roger Shields, who finishes by saying,"The study of civilization reveals the mysteries of aspiration, the merging of individual passion with a chaste reverence for tradition and the cyclical unfolding of our achievements. Our time will run its course, and one day another horowitz will be possible." Bravo! I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. Buy this book and you will not only get a superlative compilation of essays from many cultural perspectives and top-notch writing styles (yes, musicians can write!) but also a deep, loving, discussion of what piano playing means to the soul. It is at is best an exploration of the mystery of what it means to make great, otherworldly music, and what it means to play music in this world. It never pretends to explain this mystery, these artists are too wise for that, but it sheds light for audiences and musicians alike to see more clearly the divine nature of genius. Bravissimo!!
3.0 out of 5 stars
A very mixed bag, but it does contain gems,
This review is from: Remembering Horowitz: 125 Pianists Recall a Legend (Paperback)
Remembering Horowitz
125 Pianists Recall a Legend Compiled and edited by David Dubal Schirmer Books, Hardback, 1993. 8vo. xxix, 383 pp. First published in 1993. Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction Van Cliburn, Gaby Casadeus, Santiago Rodriguez, Gabriel Tacchino, James Tocco, David Bar-Illan, Bella Davidovich, Christoph Eschenbach, Samuel Lipman, Vladimir Feltsman, Lydia Artymiw, Mieczyslaw Horszowsky, Tong-Il Han, John Browning, Hans Graf, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Vladimir Viardo, Leon Fleischer, Jose Feghali, Leon Bates, Ian Hobson, Janina Fialkowska, Sahan Arzruni, Leslie Howard, Emanuel Ax, Yuri Boukoff, Gilbert Kalish, Constance Keene, Peter Frankl, Idil Biret, Charles Wadsworth, Malcolm Bilson, Maurizio Pollini, Gary Graffman, Alexander Slobodyanik, Bela Siki, Ruth Slenczynska, Geoffrey Douglas Madge, Mischa Dichter, Stephen Hough, Lazar Berman, Ronald Turini, Evelyne Crochet, Artur Balsam, Claude Frank, Seymour Bernstein, Leonard Pennario, Ursula Oppens, Rudolf Firkusny, Maurice Hinson, Leonid Hambro, Roger Shields, Alicia de Larrocha, Peter Serkin, Dmitri Alexeev, Ruth Laredo, Martin Canin, Jeffrey Siegel, David Burge, Jean-Philippe Collard, Cyprien Katsaris, Vladimir Leyetchkiss, Russell Sherman, Edward Kilenyi, Daniel Polack, Herbert Stessin, Oxana Yablonskaya, Garrick Ohlsson, Julien Musafia, James Streem, Joseph Banowetz, Michael Boriskin, Ivan Davies, Morton Estrin, John O'Conor, Harris Goldsmith, Jon Kimura Parker, Barbara Nissman, Mordecai Shehori, Michael Ponti, Charles Rosen, Abbey Simon, Israela Margalit, Louis Lortie, Jerome Rose, Walter Hautzig, Karl Ulrich Schnabel, Thomas Schumacher, Jerome Lowenthal, Rosalyn Tureck, Ari Vardi, Yefim Bronfman, Ralph Votapek, Michael Habermann, John Salmon, William Wolfram, Earl Wild, Ilana Vered, Fernando Laires, Ronald Smith, Daniel Ericourt, Samuel Sanders, Edmund Battersby, Claudette Sorel, Josef Raieff, Norman Krieger, Maria Curcio, David Wilde, Malcolm Binns, James Dick, Grant Johannesen, Coleman Blumfield, Veronica Jochum, Emanuel Krasovsky, Lorin Hollander, Peter Orth, Horacio Gutierrez, Tzimon Barto, Jeffrey Swann, John Perry, Robert Taub, Boaz Sharon, Tamas Vasary, Joseph Kalichstein, Tedd Joselson, Shura Cherkassky. Index of the Contributors General Index ============================================= I think all Horowitz admirers should be grateful to David Dubal for compiling and editing this book. There is something to enjoy in many of the 125 essays here, most of them no longer than two or three pages and fairly well written. Most importantly, they all are written not by critics or musicologists or other artistically sterile creatures but by pianists - famous or obscure, good or bad, sympathetic or malicious, but pianists nonetheless. In his compelling Introduction Mr Dubal makes the excellent point that nowadays most critics really have no idea what it takes to go on stage and play professionally, let alone artistically. Despite a characteristic purple prose here and there, the Introduction is a fascinating historical overview of the roots of the famous cliche ''The Last Romantic''. As usual with clichés, this one too makes a great deal of sense if it is put in the right historical context. Horowitz's artistic personality was formed before the Second World War, in the last decades of the so called Great Romantic tradition of piano playing when individuality of interpretation and emotional freedom were much more valuable assets than to stick fanatically to the printed notes. Horowitz carried all that with himself some four decades into the modern age of piano playing, the age that insists on the printed note being a sacred cow, the age that spoiled the audience with inhuman perfection on heavily edited records which is simply impossible to exist in the concert hall, the age that marked the end of the piano playing as art and turned it into a matter of scholarship. Small wonder that Vladimir Horowitz was so often misunderstood and harshly criticized for his very personal approach to virtually everything he ever played; most people not only completely lack imagination but are obviously too lazy, or mentally incapable perhaps, to gain a little knowledge of history and do some thinking. Though in some aspects Horowitz was very modern pianist, indulging in eccentricities on the keyboard far less than his great colleagues from the beginning of the XX century, essentially he was a perfect romantic for whom improvisational spontaneity and emotional intensity always came first. Horowitz aimed not at interpretation of the works he played but in their recreation. I am amazed people still describe Horowitz as brilliant technician and skillful showman. He was both of course. But he was so much more than that. At any rate, two questions loom large: 1) Does technique, brilliant or not, have anything to do with artistry?; and 2) What is the point of playing in front of public if you don't try to win it over? To my mind both questions are rhetorical. Let's get back to the book now. It is conspicuous how many famous pianists who were quite active, or at least alive, in the early 1990s are missing from the list of contributors to this book: Brendel, Argerich, Ashkenazy, Michelangeli, Cziffra, Richter, Zimerman, Joao Pires, to name but a few. In his Preface Mr Dubal mentions that he contacted about 175 pianists but, as it seems, some 50 of them refused to write a few words about Vladimir Horowitz. The editor gives various reasons about that: some were far too busy and had no time; others didn't bother to answer his request at all; third group refused for no apparent reason, and surprisingly so since they were admirers of Horowitz; but most of the refusals, Mr Dubal states, came from people who simply couldn't put into words the impression Horowitz made on them. It is quite amusing to read about few more ''sophisticated'' refusals: one famous virtuoso said he didn't write about cults, another celebrated artist said he didn't deal with mythologies; Mr Dubal doesn't disclose the identity of these gentlemen, but at all events the readers of ''Remembering Horowitz'' hardly lose anything from their absence. Indeed, the most fascinating essays in the book are almost exclusively those written by obscure and - to me at least - completely unknown pianists. Some great, even legendary, names in the history of piano playing might very well have spared themselves the shame of writing their ''essays''. Van Cliburn's one, for instance, is a pure sycophantic nonsense with little substance in it; Eschenbach oscillates between pure gossip and genuine adulation ending as a perfect bore. Mieczyslaw Horszowsky (1892-1993) may well have been a real legend, the pianist with the longest career in the history, a pupil of the legendary pedagogue Theodor Leschetizky (1830-1915) and a link with the Romantic age of piano playing - but his contribution of exactly six lines looks pretty much like a bad joke. Some essays of very well known pianists are appallingly self-serving; Leon Fleischer's ''fondest memories'' are when he played for Horowitz and Alicia de Larrocha's half page blurb is entirely concentrated on how Horowitz once came after a recital to greet her and how on another occasion she played his piano. There are some insightful moments in the essays by Pollini, Berman and Thibaudet - but on the whole they all are far from remarkable. In my rough estimation about one third of the pieces in the book might just as well have remained unpublished. But the majority of the essays in Remembering Horowitz are, for the most part at least, fascinating and compelling. Almost all of them are written by people who heard Horowitz live in concert or met him personally, some even knew him almost intimately for a long time. There are absurd criticisms from time to time as well as some equally absurd adulation; Horowitz at the piano (and not only) provokes everything: malice is constantly mingled with ecstasy, anger with sympathy, there is always a great deal of all too human envy. There is, indeed, everything. Surprisingly, or perhaps it's not surprising at all, pianists who are also aspiring writers - Lipman, Arzuni, for instance - write pretty badly, the latter's piece is actually an astonishingly tortured and convoluted mess; as for Samuel Lipman, he has some interesting points but on the whole he completely fails to appreciate the artistic development of Vladimir Horowitz - but he is not alone there. I wonder why people so often insist on comparing the different periods in the career of the legendary artist; as a matter of fact, there were at least four different Horowitzes through the years; any of them has his own strengths and weaknesses but - as the Turkish lady Idil Biret uncannily read my thoughts - ''Even in his most debatable interpretations, there is always an amazing sense of creativity and imagination.'' Horowitz's playing in concert and on record, always accompanied with his absolutely unique and inimitable sound, is being analysed in almost every essay here - Ax, Browning, Boukoff, Kalish, Frankl, to name just a few more memorable. A number of pianists has something charming to say about personal meetings with Horowitz (Keene, Bats, Tong-Il Han) which sometimes grows to thoughtful, sympathetic and perceptive personal portraits; reading the essays by Tocco, Bar-Illan, Keene, for example, is deeply moving experience. Of particular interest are the memories of Russian pianists - Feltsman, Viardo, Alexeev - about the historic Moscow recital in 1986 when Horowitz visited his homeland for the first time after he had left it - more than 60 years ago. By that time Horowitz was a living legend all over the world but behind the Iron Curtain, in the former USSR, he was more - he was a myth;... Read more ›
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiring,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Remembering Horowitz: 125 Pianists Recall a Legend (Paperback)
I want to give this book to a friend who is a musician and teacher of music. You had better ask her how she likes it. But I saw at a glance that it must be absolutely wonderful to have all these different views on a person as interesting and inspiring as Horowitz.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
