He was known and admired throughout the world, yet in his home country the name of Vladimir Horowitz was officially forgotten for several decades. Those who emigrated to the West were treated by the Soviets as enemies. Soviet encyclopedias and dictionaries described him as an American pianist, a representative of the romantic style of performance, and almost every source referred to the reader to different dates, even places of birth.
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Entry No. 725 was recently discovered in an archival register of births, reading that Horowitz, Vladimir SemСnovich, was born October 1, 1903, in the city of Kyiv, meaning that we will mark his centennial in two years. There are many blanks in the record of his Kyiv period. They are studied and filled in by music critic Yuri Zilberman, one of the organizers of the Horowitz Young Pianists’ Contest.
The Horowitz family had four children: Yakov, Grigory, Regina, and Vladimir, the youngest. He started playing the piano at five and his love for music was instilled by his mother. While visiting relatives in Kharkiv (1914), the gifted boy was heard by Aleksandr Scriabin who predicted his future as an outstanding pianist. Vladimir graduated from Kyiv’s music college and then conservatory. Among his teachers were Pukhalsky and Blumenfeld. At the graduation concert, Horowitz’s performance called forth an ovation. From the start of his career, the to pianist adhered to no rules or canons, be it technique or manner, following his own creative path. And he was an extraordinary man, occasionally indulging in stunts that shocked one and all. His last concert in his native land took place in 1925, at the Kyiv Philharmonic Society. The Soviet regime was finally triumphant and Vladimir Horowitz could not accept the ideology. He decided to emigrate, although would later admit that it had been a very difficult step his to take; he was leaving behind his parents and friends. He hoped to take them with him once he had settled, yet his dreams never came true. He would never set foot in Kyiv again.
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The young musician found life abroad quite complicated. His first two concerts in Berlin were total failures. Vladimir loved to play in an uninhibited way, but the German public did not appreciate it. The times were difficult as Germany was flooded by Russian ОmigrОs eager to do anything to earn a living. Meager savings lasted him through the early stage of immigration (he had managed to carry the money across the border in a socket), but the money was quickly dwindling, so the invitation to perform with a symphony orchestra was a godsend. Concert tours followed, taking him across the world. In 1928, he settled in the United States and it was not just a new place of residence, but a second homeland. He would appear in three concerts a week, and did not seem tired at all. Critics called him a musical emperor and piano legend. In the early 1930s, he met the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini and their joint performance were always to packed houses. Vladimir was now a frequent guest of Toscanini’s. He fell in love with his daughter Wanda, and they soon married. A year later they had a daughter whom Vladimir named for his mother Sonja. Money was no longer a problem and the young family settled in New York City.
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David Dubal, US music critic, pianist, professor at the Juilliard Music School, author of the book Evenings with Horowitz, briefly visited Kyiv. He believes that the maestro embodied the best piano characteristics of the twentieth century. He had a vast repertoire unmatched by any musician of the time. He was a trailblazer even in the classical domain, finding his own shades and overtones, offering interpretations of well-known compositions that made them sound new. He had such a deep insight into the composer that his renditions could well turn out totally unexpected. Modern pianists tead to play faster. At the time, Horowitz was displeased with what he called mechanical renditions. To him, music was a creative process, improvisation. He had flat fingers, yet he showed a singular virtuosity.
David Dubal recalls that he met Horowitz at the pianist’s place. He was to have several interviews with the maestro for WNCN (a New York radio station) as he was its musical director at the time. Horowitz invited him for dinner, warning it was to be black tie. Dubal had none, so he put on a neckerchief. The pianist did not like it, but smiled and said nothing. There was always a metronome on his concert piano, which he used when practicing. He was always the most exacting critic of his own performances, and if he found them lacking no laudatory reviews would ever convince him otherwise. At the time Dubal met Horowitz he was well in his middle age, his back often hurt, but he forgot about it and everything else once he was at the piano. He was very meticulous about the repertoire. For example, before recording a Mozart concerto, he would replay everything. He was fond of Scarlatti’s sonatas and Scriabin’s preludes. He would say, “I never play the same.” And he recognized no authorities. He liked Jimmy Carter because he was fond of classical music and considered Prince Charles a bore because he was snobbish. Many thought Horowitz was hard to deal with, some even considered him rude. Dubal witnessed a street scene when Horowitz was spotted by a group of female devotees. They were overjoyed, and he started making faces at them. After a successful performance he could exclaim, “Good, very good,” then turn to the orchestra and stick his tongue out. He was hard put to find a common language with people because of the language barrier. He would say, laughing, “I know five languages equally bad.” At home, he would talk to his wife in French, Dubal and he spoke English, but Russian was the only language in which he could express his ideas. Dubal believes the two understood each other so well because he could appreciate Horowitz’s “Kyiv humor,” considering that Dubal’s grandfather and father also came from the city. He saw a kindred soul in Dubal as one from an ОmigrО family. Above all, he loved discussing music with a professional.
Dubal says he often plays audio and video tapes with Horowitz and that he has made a discovery; he is never tired of listening and watching. The inner world of most musicians is ruined after their death. People stop buying their records. Those of Horowitz are invariably in demand and increasingly. Dubal himself is surprised to constantly find something new in them, heretofore undetected. The pianist’s glory in America is unabated. Steinway & Sons recently celebrated the output of a 500,000th grand piano and exhibited the one played by the great Horowitz on a special tour covering the largest US cities. The show starred America’s top pianists, and people came not only to listen to a lecture about the maestro, but also just to touch the instrument.
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And then Horowitz quit playing and would not come near the piano for twelve years. Dubal believes the reason was his depression caused by a series of events. Starting in 1940, Horowitz had a tight concert schedule. He was tired of tours and his ills had aggravated; he often complained of stomach ache. He and Toscanini collected a million dollars for just one joint concert and transferred the money to the Red Cross. Then his daughter Sophia committed suicide. It was a hard blow, and in 1953 he had a nervous breakdown. Horowitz became frightened to perform in public. Yet the twelve years of musical inactivity were not wasted. Dubal believes that it was a period of creative accumulation. Many musicians keep the same compositions on their repertoire, performing them for decades on end. During that period Horowitz scrutinized Scriabin’s works which he had never previously performed, considering his compositions cosmic. He spent all twelve years like a hermit. He was often sad. On top of everything else, he felt guilty toward his sister Regina who was still in the Soviet Union and he could not get her overseas despite all his connections.
But then the time came and he was irresistibly drawn to the stage. His comeback concert at the Metropolitan Opera in 1965 was attended by the world’s leading pianists. Once again his performance bewitched the audience. How could one play so brilliantly after such a long interval? His triumph showed that Horowitz had not been forgotten and was his old virtuoso self.
He has a love hate relationship with the musical stage. He insisted that a part of him was not the kind of musician he had dreamed of becoming. His next move was a five-year concert interval. When he decided to resume public appearances a host of critics predicted a fiasco, but Horowitz again emerged triumphant. 1978 marked the fiftieth anniversary of his music career and the pianist performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B- Flat Minor, with which he had made his debut after settling in the United States.
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Horowitz visited the Soviet Union in 1986. His concerts in Moscow and Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) were sensational. Those fortunate enough to hear and watch the maestro are still excited to share the experience. They say it was an epochal event and that they will remember it forever. The reviews were all laudatory. Horowitz was happy and made no secret of the fact, although his eyes remained sad. His sister had died a month before his visit and could not share his triumph.
Dubal is especially impressed by Horowitz’s performance at the White House for President Reagan in 1988. He was his usual brilliant self, but vanished before the reception. Dubal and Horowitz’s wife Wanda walked over the premises and found him sick with frustration. He said nervously that David was the only one who could understand him and how badly he had performed. It took David much persuading to make him attend the reception, but the pianist remained perplexed throughout the evening. A real creative personality is always the most ruthless judge of his own accomplishment.
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Many that were in contact with Horowitz could not understand when he was joking. Thus, he would speak of Liszt and Chopin as though both were his close friends and contemporaries. Or he would say that one should never trust people that do not like Tchaikovsky. He was a very good friend of Sergei Rachmaninoff and the first performer of many of his compositions. I am a tree and I don’t know its height, he said, but Rachmaninoff is the biggest tree in the world. They often met and discussed news in the Soviet Union. Both were homesick, but while Rachmaninoff wrote in his testament that he wanted to be buried in St. Petersburg, Horowitz did not want to return, saying the USSR was a prison. He had reason, for his older brother Yakov was killed in the civil war [1918-20], his middle brother Grigory hanged himself in the mid-1920s (nervously afflicted). His father and sister were refusniks. For long decades they were forbidden to correspond with Horowitz. His father was first arrested shortly after Vladimir’s immigration. Samuel Horowitz was released after four months. In 1929, his mother died after an unsuccessful appendectomy. His father married again and moved to Moscow, to live closer to his daughter Regina. She worked for the Goskontsert State Concert Agency and played accompaniment for Oistrakh and Bershtein. Vladimir could meet with his father only in 1934 in neutral Switzerland. After Samuel Horowitz returned home he was arrested as “an enemy of the people” and he never got out of the Stalinist Gulag.
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Five days before his death Vladimir Horowitz was recording Chopin and Liszt etudes, and Wagner’s Nocturne for Sony, demonstrating his unmatched virtuoso technique. He died at 86 and was buried in the Toscanini vault, leaving no direct descendants. His second cousin, also a pianist, lives in Britain. His archives are stored at Yale University, and his famous Steinway grand piano (No. CD- 513) is in San Paolo. His name returned to Kyiv in 1995, after organizing the biennial Horowitz Young Pianists Contest.
