4 Apr 2006

Vladimir Horowitz Plays Bach/Busoni

The octogenerian Horowitz:



A legend in any lifetime.

Posted by Shablagoo!

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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

and all I can play is "Chopsticks"... :( well, not really...I could play a number of contemporary tunes...i suck at classical pieces though... :(

24 February, 2007
Anonymous said...

I am always amazed by Horowitz "flat fingers" technique! I really admire him for the fact that he always would "bring" his own piano to the concert hall where he performed. Today I went to the concert to hear Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" to be performed on the piano (by Fazil Say) and right before the concert he changed his program due to "mechanical problems" of local pianos (the Shriver Hall in Baltimore). No words!

24 February, 2007
Shablagoo! said...

I went to a John Lill recital at the Royal Festival Hall a few years back and the poor guy had to play with the squeekiest pedal I've ever heard @ a recital. He managed to get through a Prokofiev sonata before apologising to the audience and disappearing to get a technician. I somehow doubt the likes of Pollini, Brendel or Uschida would have been given such a poorly set-up instrument!

24 February, 2007
Anonymous said...

Horowitz would always "haul" his own piano wherever he would go... Uchida and Zimerman still do it... Even though Zimerman was ridiculed lately for this... He actually performed at the same event (Piano Celebration in Baltimore, MD). And he did bring his own Hamburg-made Steinway... http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2006/04/political-piano-zimerman-at-shriver.html p.s. I am sure it's very costly and always very risky to drag own precious instrument on tours... on the other hand, the squeekiest pedal can be really annoying... for a pianist and for the audience ... no doubt about that. :) Margarita

24 February, 2007
Shablagoo! said...

"Then came Beethoven’s Pathétique, op. 13. And with it a dramatic – indeed pathetic – dedication to those men in prison who have had no fair trial because �some men broke the law because they decided to be the law.� Despite some supportive hollers, the air of inappropriateness hung heavy over Shriver Hall at that unexpected political outburst. I am sure that the assorted inmates at Gitmo � terrorists, soldiers, innocents, and Mudjaheddin alike � (the kind who support regimes that outlaw Beethoven, blow up statues of Buddha, condemn converts to Christianity to death, generally unenthusiastic about womens' rights) appreciated his gift of the Beethoven sonata tremendously. " I guess the reviewer missed the point Zimerman as making. Acting like your enemy doesn't make you any better than them.

24 February, 2007
Anonymous said...

I don't think classical music and current political situation should be mixed together... What do you think?

24 February, 2007
Shablagoo! said...

Perhaps, but this speechmaking is not unprecedented. The left wing Pollini infamously made an anti-Vietnam speech @ a New York concert in the 1970s which was net with a mixture of derisory cat-calls and applause. Its the artists choice. Like all things they have to live with the consequences. Its not as if Zimerman is some young firebrand trying to make a name for himself.

24 February, 2007

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