Search - Vladimir Horowitz :: Vladimir Horowitz At Carnegie Hall-The Private Collection: Mussorgsky & Liszt

Horowitz, Carnegie Hall, 4.5 stars

jsa | San Diego, CA United States | 01/14/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Aside from Bizet's "Carmen" & Sousa's "Stars & Stripes Forever," which were piano arrangements of orchestral scores, Vladimir Horowitz made changes to a number of piano scores that he felt were improvements to the originals. For example, Horowitz rewrote passages, typically adding supplemental chords to create drama or filling in notes here or there to highlight points, to Balakirev's "Islamey," Liszt's "St Francis of Paola Walking on the Water," "Vallee d'Obermann" & several of the Liszt rhapsodies among other things. While this practice was not uncommon in nineteenth century pianism, by the mid-twentieth century the composer's notes were considered more or less sacred & artists pretty much stuck to playing what was on the printed page. Nevertheless, even Rachmaninoff, as famous a pianist as he was a composer, continued tinkering with scores; & while he didn't re-write whole passages, he did add notes to Chopin where he felt something extra was needed. Needless to say, adding to or subtracting from a Chopin score would be totally unacceptable today - but making adjustments to Liszt, such as Horowitz continued to do throughout his career (his last modification was Mephisto Waltz in 1979) is more acceptable because there's a tradition of Liszt arrangements that provide some foundation for the practice.



The proof, I suppose, is ultimately in the results, which is to say that the listener can decide for himself whether or not he likes the final product. I loved Horowitz's "Mephisto Waltz" & thought "Vallee d'Obermann" from his 1966 Carnegie Hall recital was exciting even though his additions were unnecessary. In the case of the emendations Horowitz made to Balakirev's "Islamey" & Liszt's "St Francis of Paola Walking on the Water," which appear on a separate Horowitz "Private Collection" disc, I believe that the changes not only add nothing but actually detract from the composers' works. Just listen to Kempff's thrilling traversal of the second Liszt Legend & Arrau's monumental "Islamey" & you'll see that they stand perfectly well by themselves.



Horowitz's most famous re-arrangement, and in my view the most successful, was "Pictures at an Exhibition" where supplemental chords & fillers really are an improvement. Olin Downes, who wrote the program notes for the 1947 Carnegie Hall recital when Horowitz introduced his version of "Pictures," stated that "Mr. Horowitz has done a little 'piano orchestration' in ways confined to octave doublings, redistribution of passage work between the hands, transpositions of brief passages an octave below or above the original pitch etc. The effort has been solely to realize the intention of the composer and to refrain from gratuitous ornamention or officious 'correction' of any detail of the text as it stands."



Apparently, not everyone agreed with Horowitz's intentions. In the liner notes accompanying this disc, David Dubal quotes Horowitz as telling him, "they said I put graffiti on Mussorgsky, but I don't give a damn. I worked hard on that transcription, I am proud of it. You see, I felt the Pictures had to be brought forward. They were too introverted. When I change anything it is only to make a better piano sound." In my view, Richter's justly famous recording from his 1956 Sofia recital is still no match for Horowitz & the primary reason is that Horowitz is playing from a more interesting score. The performance on this disc is somewhat of a cross between the more stately studio version Horowitz recorded for RCA in 1947 & the chromium-plated reading from a 1951 Carnegie Hall recital (my favorite), both now available in the Horowitz Complete Original Jacket Collection.



The Liszt sonata which is a disc-mate to Mussorgsky, is another matter. Here Horowitz decided to cut from the score: from bar 291 to the middle of bar 313. Dubal calls the cut "unexplainable"; however, Horowitz must have thought it an improvement. It certainly isn't a memory lapse; if so, Horowitz would never have preserved this recording, nor would the producers have issued it. I hesitate to call this cut a travesty, yet I don't know how else to describe it other than to say that it is an example of bad judgment. In any event, Horowitz's reading is organized, fluid & epic in a way that is totally unlike his 1978 stereo remake for RCA. I only wish he had relied a little more on the crystal clear articulation that is thrilling to hear all by itself & less on bursts of excessive speed & crashing chords. But that too was Horowitz...."