<<  -- 7 --  John Bell Young    BOTH ANGEL AND DEVIL

In Beethoven, a composer with whom he had little sympathy, the entire bag of Horowitz's bag of tricks failed him. It's not that he couldn't navigate through the thorny physical difficulties of any Beethoven -- and it is reported, by Bryce Morrison, that he played all the thirty two sonatas -- but that he failed to grasp the larger and in most cases, the smaller picture that drives the idea behind the notes. Horowitz disdained the expressive and formal role of dissonance in this music, and attenuated the pugnaciousness and philosophical implications that this repertoire must above all convey. His tempi were often conceived without any consideration for either the demands of form or content, and in music where superficial display is cruelly turned back on itself for what it is, that posed a special danger. Much the same can be said for his unusually aggressive approach to Debussy, whose music is no less sufficiently complex and demanding as to spurn anyone who would eviscerate it of its mystery. Even so, who could disparage Horowitz for one of the most endearing Debussy performances of all time, the Serenade for a Doll, to which he brings such immeasurable subtlety in his 16 November 1975 Carnegie recital?

Schumann's extraordinary world of nervous fragmentation and abundant melody would seem ideally suited for Horowitz's no less neurotic temperament, and in many ways, it was, that is, until one takes a deeper look at Schumann's scores. The composers' debt, both acknowledged as much as unconscious, to the compositional procedures and language of the baroque era is well known, but Horowitz couldn't have cared less about any of that. He was in heaven when playing Schumann, whose music he loved dearly. And despite the aesthetic naiveté of his stimulating and often thrilling readings, which often leave the music threadbare, that devotion communicates anther, perhaps no less valid dimension of musical experience -- emotional, if not affective intimacy -- that is not so easily dismissed by the sanctimonious posturing of the musical purists. No one who has heard Horowitz in Traumerei could fail to be touched by its heartbreaking sincerity and reflective melancholy.

In Russian music, he was fairly incomparable. No one could argue that his famous (and several recorded) readings of Tchaikovsky's evergreen B flat concerto, the Rachmaninoff 3rd concerto (and anything else of Rachmaninoff for that matter), Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, Prokofieff's Seventh Sonata, and a host of glittering encores were object lessons in pianistic decorum.

And yet, if there is one thing that made Horowitz tower above all other pianists, and contributed to his uniqueness, it is the grandeur of his playing that seemed to transcend his lapses of taste and intellectual refinement. No matter that, at times, his performances of Chopin's G minor Ballade or Scriabin's Poeme Feuillet d'Album are awash in a litany of mannered, tapered phrases and sentimental indulgences, and sidle up to something resembling cocktail music: In the final analysis, what does it matter? What Horowitz brought to music, without ever quite going over the top into distortion, was a kind of delicious decadence that placed a premium on pure, aural pleasure. Thus did he communicate something of the white hot, efflorescent sexual sensibility of a vanished era. If there is something just a wee bit lascivious or even fetishistic about that, so be it. Certainly the music can withstand it, and at times, even benefit.

Of the hundreds of recordings he made over his long career (most available now on Sony Classical and RCA-Red Seal), and in spite of his twenty five Grammy awards, not one, save perhaps the LPs he made for RCA Red Seal in the 1950s, did justice to the quality of his sound. In contrast to the bright, even edgy sound conveyed by his recordings, particularly now on CD, in concert his tone was sweet, alluring, and even seductive. There were no real hard hedges to it, but a kind of luxurious patina that drew the listener into his unique world as if by stealth. He could project even the most discreet pianissimo with power and clarity to the most distant seat in any hall.

Though more than one pianist will claim disdain for Horowitz's flamboyant, highly charged Technicolor playing, no one could claim not to have been influenced him. Any pianist who protests otherwise would be lying. Though as pianists, each of us eventually goes his own separate musical way, developing an individual approach, Horowitz, for the majority of us, was our first major inspiration. He opened our ears to the innumerable possibilities of our chosen instrument and what we might do with it.

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