Vladimir Horowitz

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Horowitz (1986)

Vladimir Horowitz ( Russian Владимир Самойлович Горовиц / Vladimir Samoilowitsch Gorowiz ; Hebrew ולדימיר הורוביץ; Ukrainian Володимир Самійлович Горовиць / Volodymyr Samijlowytsch Horowyz ) (* September 18 jul. / 1. October  1903 greg. In Berdichev , Russian Empire ; † 5. November  1989 in New York City ) was a Russian pianist and an American citizen since 1944 . He is considered one of the most famous piano virtuosos of the 20th century.

Life

Vladimir Horowitz was born on October 1, 1903 - not in 1904, as has been widespread since 1925, and which his biographer Glenn Plaskin (* 1953) had already doubted in 1983 - in the shtetl of Berditschew in the Russian Ukraine as the son of an electrical engineer. Other sources name Kiev as the place of birth. He came from an assimilated Jewish family. He received his first piano lessons at the age of six from his mother, an amateur pianist. While still at school, he studied piano and composition at the Kiev Conservatory with Vladimir Puchalski , Sergej Tarnowsky and above all with Felix Blumenfeld . Impressed by the game of the 11-year-old Horowitz, Alexander Scriabin recommended his support to his parents. In order to support the family impoverished by the First World War and the October Revolution , Horowitz toured Russia as a pianist from 1921 without much success, although he actually wanted to be a composer. Even 25 concert evenings in the 1924/25 season in Leningrad only brought minimal financial gain. He was often used as a political propaganda agent - a role that he did not like; but he came to early fame as one of the most promising young pianists.

Berlin, Hamburg, New York

Horowitz around 1920

He left the Soviet Union with his friend and manager Alexander Marowitsch in autumn 1925 and traveled to Berlin . On December 18, he made his debut in Germany in the Blüthner Hall of the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory as a soloist in Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra under Oskar Fried .

On January 2nd, 4th and 14th, 1926, the artist agency Hermann Wolff & Jules Sachs organized three piano evenings with Horowitz in the Beethoven Hall of the Berlin Philharmonic . They became great artistic successes and the reviews were excellent; the last evening was sold out. On January 19 he jumped in for a sick colleague in Hamburg - without a trial ; Tchaikovsky's B flat minor concerto caused a sensation. In January 1926 he recorded twelve pieces for their Welte-Mignon reproduction piano for the Freiburg company M. Welte & Sons , including his Moment exotique (Danse excentrique) . They are Horowitz's oldest recordings. A second piano recital in Hamburg and the following concerts in other German cities, in Switzerland , Italy and France became celebrated sensations. On October 25, 1926 Horowitz made his first guest appearance with the Berliner Philharmoniker , with Liszt's A major concerto under Wilhelm Furtwängler . After concerts in London and Paris, he played for the second time with the Berlin Philharmonic on November 7, 1927, this time Tchaikovsky's B minor concerto under Bruno Walter .

On January 12, 1928, Horowitz made his debut with the Tchaikovsky Concerto in Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic under Thomas Beecham . In the third and final concert with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Furtwängler on October 21, 1929, he played Brahms' 2nd piano concerto . Furtwängler and Horowitz didn't understand each other. On June 12, 1931 Horowitz's only surviving Berlin record was made, Rachmaninoff 's Prelude in G minor .

On March 30, 1932 Horowitz played piano trios by Beethoven , Rachmaninov and Brahms with Nathan Milstein and Gregor Piatigorsky in Carnegie Hall . In the same year he gave a first concert with Arturo Toscanini in New York City . On December 21, 1933, he married his daughter Wanda. Wanda Toscanini Horowitz attached great importance to the preservation of her name. Her father and Horowitz appreciated and liked one another. They often played music together and recorded two records (Brahms' B flat major and Tchaikovsky's B flat minor concerto).

Exhausted and ill from concert life, Horowitz lived in Paris from 1934 to 1938 , including two years with his student and lover Nico Kaufmann from 1937 . Lea Singer used his autobiographical notes, which were unpublished during his lifetime, as a research basis for her psychogrammatic novel about relationships in times of obsessively concealed homosexuality . After giving the last concerts in Germany in 1932, he finally moved to the USA in 1939 due to political developments in Europe . In 1944 he received American citizenship .

Loads and breaks

Horowitz's career was interrupted by numerous withdrawals, nervous crises and breaks due to illness. After he had given a concert with the New York Philharmonic under George Szell on January 12, 1953 and a piano recital on February 25 to commemorate his debut 25 years ago, he decided not to appear in public; He continued to make recordings. After 12 years he gave a piano recital for the first time on May 19, 1965 in Carnegie Hall. He himself had not expected the phenomenal success. In early 1968, the recordings for the first television concert, which was broadcast by CBS on September 22nd, were made in Carnegie Hall with an audience. In 1969 Horowitz withdrew again from concert life.

His daughter Sonya (* 1934) died in 1975 from an overdose of sleeping pills. Life with his wife Wanda was not always easy because, unlike her, he was introverted and could be closed. The stresses led to further problems. From 1982 Horowitz took antidepressants for a certain period of time , which impaired his playing and was shown at two concerts in Tokyo in 1983 .

Appearances, returns and students

Horowitz receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald and Nancy Reagan

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his Carnegie Hall debut on January 12, 1928, he was invited to the White House on February 26, 1978 and played a recital of works by Chopin in the East Room in front of about 300 guests (such as his second piano sonata and the Ace- Major polonaise ) and shorter pieces by Schumann and Rachmaninoff, which was televised. He was greeted with a laudation by host Jimmy Carter , began the concert with the American national anthem The Star-Spangled Banner and ended it with his Carmen Variations . In 1931 he had been invited by President Herbert Hoover to play in the White House.

Elmar Weingarten and Peter Gelb won him over in 1985 with some cunning, after 52 years to perform again in Germany - through a concert tour to the sites of his early triumphs. After starting it on April 20 and 27, 1986 in Moscow and Leningrad , the 83-year-old first came to Hamburg on May 11, 1986 . The success in the Laeiszhalle was not inferior to that in Russia. Richard von Weizsäcker then awarded Horowitz the Great Federal Cross of Merit with a star and shoulder ribbon . On Pentecost Sunday (May 18), the audience in the Berlin Philharmonic received him with a standing ovation . Overwhelmed by the jubilation, he played again a week later - like Franz Liszt in 1842.

Concerts in London and Tokyo followed, and in late autumn 1986 in Frankfurt am Main , Amsterdam , and again in London and Chicago . The following year Horowitz played in Amsterdam on May 24th and - for the first time in 50 years - in Vienna on May 31st, 1987. The last concert recording with Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major , KV 488 under Carlo Maria Giulini was made in 1987 for Deutsche Grammophon and was filmed. His last concerts in Germany were in Berlin on June 7th and in Hamburg on June 21st, 1987. As for decades, all concerts began on Sundays at 4:00 pm.

In October 1989 Horowitz appeared in public for the last time at the book signing of a New York record store. He died of a heart attack on November 5, 1989 . On November 10th (the day after the fall of the Berlin Wall ) he was buried in the Toscanini crypt in Milan . Most of his fortune, estimated at $ 8 million, was left to his wife.

Horowitz had some students like Gary Graffman , Ronald Turini or Byron Janis , for whom he wrote etudes and who later stated that without timely self-reflection he could have become a copy of his teacher.

Piano art

Even at the beginning of his career, Horowitz was often compared to Franz Liszt or Anton Rubinstein and was considered one of the most virtuoso pianists of his time. His outstanding technique, the powerful octaves and bass, the dynamic variability of his playing and the wide range of timbres were praised . In doing so, he avoided the well-trodden paths and also selected rarely performed works by composers whose oeuvre lies in the shadow of Beethoven and Chopin .

While he was opposed to complete recordings, he showed a very broad repertoire with works from the Viennese Classic and Romantic periods as well as some from the 20th century. He played Johannes Brahms ' first and second piano concerto as well as Samuel Barbers' piano sonata, which he premiered in 1949, and Dmitri Borissowitsch Kabalewski's third piano sonata, or selected out-of-the-way pieces by Carl Czerny , Gabriel Faurés , Francis Poulencs or Moritz Moszkowskis .

Franz Liszt 1839, portrait by Henri Lehmann

The focus of his interest were works by Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann as well as the Russian composers Sergei Rachmaninow and Alexander Scriabin. His recordings of several sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti have reference status. In addition, Horowitz is regarded as a leading pianist and rediscoverer of the works of Muzio Clementi , whom he described as the "father of modern piano playing".

The fact that he played on his own instrument, a Steinway concert grand of American design, at every concert was also helpful in asserting his ideas . A dedicated piano technician traveled with the tours and was responsible for correct assembly and tuning. Records were also recorded on his personal grand piano.

For Joachim Kaiser , Horowitz was the most captivating Liszt interpreter of his time. An early recording of the Sonata in B minor shows how virtuosity turns "into crazy tension". Horowitz not only played the infamous octave passage shortly before the end with fabulous speed and resonance, but also showed how these “octaves express a haunted and grandiose Lisztian temperament”, a “struggle for life and death”. His rhythmic refinement, with which he played the 19th Hungarian Rhapsody , for example , could not be learned. He also criticized certain mannerisms , for example in Mozart's A major sonata and even in Schumann's Kreisleriana .

Other critics accused him of his free handling of the musical text and objected that he would ignore the content of the works because of the effect by using extreme tempos and dynamic exaggerations. The American composer and critic Virgil Thomson called him a “master of distortion”. Reference was made to his flowery and exaggerated idiosyncratic interpretation of the works of Mozart and Beethoven (whom he did not like). Claudio Arrau told his colleague, famous for his octaves, to tense up and become unmusical, especially with longer octave passages.

Horowitz also did not spare criticism of colleagues; He described the British pianist and Beethoven interpreter Solomon as a bore and repeatedly criticized young pianists who lacked musicality. With the words I want to be Cziffra! he expressed his admiration for the Hungarian-French virtuoso György Cziffra . Horowitz was one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century and, after the title of an American documentary film, was called the last true romantic at the piano ( The Last Romantic ).

Horowitz as editor

Horowitz transcribed some works by Mendelssohn , Franz Liszt, Mussorgsky , Sousa , Bizet , Saint Saens and other composers for piano and played it - in addition to brilliant salon pieces Moszkowski or Scarlatti sonatas - like the addition . He did not do without effective additions such as thundering 16th octave passages, powerful chords and pearly runs. Particularly noteworthy are his arrangements of the 2nd and 15th Hungarian Rhapsody , the transcription of Mendelssohn's wedding march by Franz Liszt and the military march Stars and Stripes Forever by Sousa. In addition to smaller pieces and a controversial transcription of Ravel's orchestral version of the pictures at an exhibition , the Carmen Variations deserve special mention. This very virtuoso piece is occasionally played as an encore by some pianists such as Arcadi Volodos , Evgeny Kissin and Yuja Wang .

literature

Web links

Wikiquote: Vladimir Horowitz  - Quotes
Commons : Vladimir Horowitz  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Vladimir Horowitz | Russian pianist. Retrieved April 2, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Biography Markus Zint (SONY)
  3. ↑ Biography at KlassikAkzente. Retrieved January 10, 2012 .
  4. ↑ Horowitz 85? Despite all lexicons: The pianist celebrates his jubilee. In: Guitar & Lute , Volume 10, Issue 6, 1988, p. 39 f.
  5. ↑ Jan Brachmann: "Sounds of an unlived life" , review in the FAZ on July 16, 2019, accessed on the same date
  6. ↑ Horowitz Plays for Carter . In: New York Times, February 27, 1978
  7. ↑ Vladimir Horowitz - Return to Chicago (trailer). In: YouTube . Deutsche Grammophon , October 20, 2015, accessed November 8, 2015 .
  8. ^ Gregor Willmes in: PianistenProfile. 600 performers: their biography, their style, their recordings. Ingo Harden, Gregor Willmes. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2008, p. 322
  9. ↑ Joachim Kaiser : Vladimir Horowitz. In: Great pianists in our time. Munich 2004. p. 106
  10. ^ So Gregor Willmes in: PianistenProfile. 600 performers: their biography, their style, their recordings. Ingo Harden, Gregor Willmes. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2008, p. 320.
  11. ^ Gregor Willmes in: PianistenProfile. 600 performers: their biography, their style, their recordings. Ingo Harden, Gregor Willmes. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2008, p. 321
  12. ↑ Vladimir Horowitz. Broadcast manuscript Deutschlandfunk Köln. Broadcast: Nov. 1990 - "Historical Recordings". In: KölnKlavier. Deutschlandfunk , accessed on December 22, 2014 .
  13. ↑ Note: This wing is made accessible to the public by the builder. Grand piano: Vladimir Horowitz's legendary magic box in Düsseldorf. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung . December 29, 2009.
  14. ↑ Joachim Kaiser: Vladimir Horowitz. In: Great pianists in our time. Munich 2004. pp. 98-102.
  15. ↑ Martin Meyer : On the 100th birthday of the great pianist. Horowitz, legend and reality. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . October 1, 2003, accessed June 14, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Dorothea Hußlein: Vladimir Horowitzs forbidden love , br-klassik.de, March 1, 2019, accessed on April 5, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Horowitz, Vladimir
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gorowitz, Wladimir Samoilowitsch (maiden name); Горовиць, Володимир Самійлович (Ukrainian); Горовиц, Владимир Самойлович (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American pianist
DATE OF BIRTH October 1, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Berdichev , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 5th November 1989
Place of death new York