Vladimir Horowitz

Horowitz in 1931

Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (October 1, 1903 – November 5, 1989) was a Russian and American pianist. Considered one of the greatest pianists of all time, he was known for his virtuoso technique, timbre, and the public excitement engendered by his playing.

Quotes

• Interesting pianist, but I think he is just a little bit meshuga.
  • On Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, Horowitz: his life and music

• Perfection itself is imperfection.
  • Mentioned in Brainy Quotes

• Of the Russian pianists I like only one, Richter. Gilels did some things well, but I did not like his mannerisms, the way he moved around while he was playing.
  • quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, Horowitz: his life and music

• I was impressed mostly by Gieseking [Horowitz said in 1987]. He had a finished style, played with elegance, and had a fine musical mind.
  • quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, Horowitz: his life and music

• I heard Edwin Fischer, who did not mean much to me. I heard another pianist in Berlin who had a big success and I thought he was awful — Mischa Levitzki. Just fingers, and you cannot listen only to fingers. There is a difference between artist and artisan. Levitzki was an artisan. But Ignaz Friedman, who I admired, was a great artist. He had wonderful fingers and a very personal, individual way of playing, even if some of his ideas were very strange to me. He had no hesitation touching up the music. I got annoyed with him at one concert when he changed the basses in Chopin's F minor Ballade. I didn't like that. For some reason he was happier making records than he was on the stage.
  • quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, Horowitz: his life and music

• I liked him [Arthur Rubinstein] as a pianist. He was a good musician and had a fantastic repertoire. He never had a great technique, but certain things he played well. I heard him play some of the Chopin etudes, the easier ones with great panache and I told him I had never heard them played better. He said, "Do you mean it?" and I said, "Yes, I do mean it."
  • quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, Horowitz: his life and music

Quotes about Horowitz

• I don’t believe that about his Chopin, actually. I think his Chopin was extraordinarily perceptive and terribly personal. ... On the criticism of Horowitz’ Chopin, I haven’t heard that myself, but I think that comes down to taste.
  • Leon Fleisher, Interview with pianist Leon Fleisher by Elijah Ho (October 1, 2014)

• Nearly five years have passed since I had the opportunity to admire this magician of the keyboard. My impatience to hear him again was shared by the public, who actually assaulted the doors of the great Salle Pleyel in order to attend the Horowitz recital. I expected to hear the 'demonic' virtuoso who amazed the world at his debut. Instead I found him transformed-but not for the better. He still remains the same extraordinary pianist, but I had the impression-and I hope I am not the only one-that Horowitz is trying a tout prix to 'purify' his interpretations, to strip them of anything approaching artificiality. Yet, he accomplished this in such a way as to produce the contrary effect: his playing becomes mechanical and deadly artificial!
  • Dinu Lipatti, 'Cronica artistica. Viata Muzicala la Paris,' Libertatea, Bucharest, October 1939

• No pianist, it is unnecessary to say, has an all-embracing culture. Like any other, Horowitz has had his specialties. Most professionals would agree that Horowitz played Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Scriabin and Prokofieff with more flair than any pianist of his time. And one of the curious things about this extraordinary technician was that he had a surprising affinity for the miniatures of the repertoire. Scarlatti; Chopin mazurkas and waltzes; isolated pieces by Schumann; salon music by Moszkowski — these he played with grace, charm and unaffected simplicity. In the larger Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin works, he sometimes would become too engrossed in detail, and at those moments his playing could sound disconnected. At times, too, the nervous intensity with which he approached music could be unsettling. Inner repose was lacking. Yet he could turn around and play Schumann's Arabesque in a calm, rippling, spacious manner, or sing out the last movement of the C major Fantasy with with wide-arched lines and a luminous quality of tone. A paradoxical and fearsome pianist.
  • Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists (1987)