Brattleboro Reformer

http://www.reformer.com/ovation/ci_12847758

July 18, 2009

The first English ‘musical’ exposes

corrupt government
By FRANK BEHRENS

KEENE, N.H.

Horowitz -- As part of its "Carnegie Hall Presents" series, an RCA Red Seal CD is
devoted to "Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall -- the Private Collection: Mussorgsky &
Liszt." It seems that the pianist had hired someone to make 78 rpm recordings of the
concerts he gave in the Hall in the 1940s and 1950s. The collection was donated to Yale
University in 1988, and this disc holds two pieces from those discs.

His "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Mussorgsky was recorded in 1948 and will bear
comparison with other keyboard interpretations of this familiar work -- more familiar in
the Ravel orchestration, I suppose. He plays it a bit more strongly than others, but it is
impressive and deserves repeated hearings over the years.

The Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor, recorded in 1949, is as powerful in a different way.
Collectors would want to compare it with his 1932 recording, long considered by some
the "standard" recording for this piece.

This CD can be recommended on all counts.

 July 09, 2009

http://collaborativepiano.blogspot.com/2009/07/vladimir-horowowitz-at-carnegie-hall.html

Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall - The Private Collection

When I was younger, one of the things I always wished when listening to
some of the late recordings of Vladimir Horowitz was to be able to hear more recordings
of him in his prime than were available then, with a level of sound quality that would
give a more complete picture of his playing, and be able to fill in the many mysterious
gaps in his decades-long development as a pianist.

That moment has come.

Sony has recently announced three collections of recently unearthed recordings of

Horowitz, the first of which is entitled Vladimir Horowitz At Carnegie Hall-The Private
Collection: Mussorgsky & Liszt.

Some interesting tidbits about the lost recordings and their reappearance from Sony's
press release:

This release features performances of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, from April

2, 1948, and the Liszt Sonata, from March 21, 1949, both at Carnegie Hall. Two more
Private Collection releases are scheduled for the fall and early 2010; they include music
by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Haydn, and Beethoven.

In 1988, a year before his death, Horowitz donated to Yale University a treasure trove of
original recordings composed of Carnegie Hall concerts and performances he gave during
the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Horowitz had employed an engineer to make 78-rpm
recordings of his Carnegie Hall concerts in this period, and he used them to review and
judge his performances. Most of these mono recordings were originally contained on 12-
and 16-inch acetate discs. They have been impeccably mastered, with the sound restored,
from new transfers made in the Yale archives. Significant press accompanied the original
announcement of the donation of these recordings to Yale, where Horowitz performed
often through the years and was an assistant fellow of Silliman College.
The first volume is classic Horowitz. He is in sovereign form for the Liszt Sonata, a piece
associated with him throughout his career for its incredible virtuoso display, with its
cascading runs punctuated by incisive chords. As David Dubal, professor of Piano
Performance at the Juilliard School, mentions in his liner notes, “His Liszt Sonata was
invincible.” Dubal adds that the private collection release is “more glorious than the 1932
recording,” which is typically considered the gold standard for performance of the sonata.
Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition demonstrates a different kind of fearlessness
unique to Horowitz. His interpretive license as a transcriber of famous works and
melodies—including his frequent encores, Variations on a Theme from ‘Carmen’ and
Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever—has become a part of his legacy, but even in this
context, his transcription of Mussorgsky’s Pictures is particularly bold. For Horowitz,
there were no hallowed works, only great performances.
What I noticed about these recordings is that they offer an amazingly accurate picture of
how Horowitz played at the absolute height of his powers, and with pretty good sound to
boot (albeit for the late 40's on acetate). In addition to deadly accuracy, which one doesn't
associate with his later recordings, he is able to create unbelievably bold colors at the
piano, from passages played with raw power and authority to moments of the most
exquisite and tender sentiment imaginable.

Now the cool part...

To celebrate this occasion, Sony Music has made available to readers of the
Collaborative Piano Blog two copies of Horowitz at Carnegie Hall - The Private
Collection, and to decide who gets them, I will be holding a contest tomorrow on
Friday, July 10 at 12pm EDT.

The contest post will go live at noon EDT and to win you'll need to answer a skill-testing
Horowitz trivia question and email me the answer. Stay tuned...
 THE BUFFALO NEWS
Entertainment
July 5, 2009

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/724176.html

Listening Post /Brief reviews of select releases

By: Jeff Simon

Vladimir Horowitz, At Carnegie Hall –The Private Collection: Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an

Exhibition” and Liszt’s Sonata in B-Minor (RCA Red Seal/Sony Classics). These 1948 and
1949 performances of the two great virtuoso extravaganzas by his era’s most fabled virtuoso
pianist are making their appearances on record for the first time. They were recorded in
Carnegie Hall recitals and were part of the Horowitz collection originally donated to Yale
University in 1988. Subsequent Horowitz “Private Collection” discs in the series from the same
era will include music by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Haydn and Beethoven. It goes without
saying that no matter how much sonic cosmetology is applied to these performances, the sound
remains on a level far from modern—especially in the Mussorgsky. It also ought to go without
saying that Horowitz comes directly from the Russian tradition that considered Mussorgsky a
bit of a dunce/genius who always required the ministrations of a greater musical intelligence (a
Rimsky-Korsakov, say) to turn his great creations into the masterworks they were. So what you
hear, then, here is Horowitz’s adaptation of Mussorgsky which is definitely not for purists. No
matter. The sound is more than good enough and Horowitz’s performance is predictably mind-
boggling, even more so in the later 1949 performance of Liszt’s great B-minor Sonata that the
great piano connoisseur David Dubal now considers even greater than Horowitz’s 1932
recording of it. An amazing addition to the Horowitz catalog. ★★★★
HANK’S RAMBLINGS AND MUSINGS
June 30, 2009

http://hankdrake.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-latest-review.html

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

Sony has dipped into the archives at Yale University for this first ever
release of performances by Vladimir Horowitz at the height of his powers.

Horowitz was well known for his transcriptions of such works as Liszt's Hungarian
Rhapsodies and Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever. But he faced criticism when he altered
significant portions of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition - which was and remains
far better known in Ravel's transcription for orchestra. Truth be told, Mussorgsky's
original version is one of the most poorly written pieces - in terms of writing for the
instrument, not musical ideas - in the piano repertoire. Before Horowitz, few pianists
even bothered playing it at all. Those that did often made alterations, such as
Moiseiwitsch in 1945. But it took someone with the guts and imagination of Horowitz to
undertake a wholesale rewriting of the piece - which angered a lot of purists. In fact,
Horowitz's changes are far more subtle than the firecracker like passageworks he afforded
in his other arrangements.

Previous to this release, there were two issued recordings of Horowitz playing his
arrangement of Pictures. The studio recording, from 1947, and a live Carnegie Hall
performance, from 1951. Most reviewers have tended to prefer the 1951 recording, which
has some incendiary passagework in The Hut on Fowl's Legs. I've been partial to the
1947 performance, which comes across as more of a single piece, rather than
sectionalized. (Unfortunately, the 1947 recording has suffered from particularly poor
remastering in BMG's Gold Seal Horowitz reissue.) The performance released here, from
April 2, 1948, is more along the lines of the 1947 recording - although Horowitz, no
doubt under the "battle-conditions" of live performance, does push tempo and articulation
to extremes at times. Each Picture leads as part of the whole to the inevitable climax of
the Great Gate of Kiev (appropriately, Kiev is the town where Horowitz grew up).

The 1949 recording of Liszt's Sonata in B Minor is another matter entirely - this
performance is like nothing you've ever heard. Neither the cheetah like sprint of
Horowitz's famed 1932 recording nor the labored grandiloquence of his 1977 remake can
compare with this overwhelmingly incendiary performance. There will no doubt be
controversy here, as Horowitz cuts 22 bars from the central Recitativo section of the
work - but this performance must be heard.

The sound has been excellently restored by Jon Samuels. A few quibbles: This disc is not
will filled - and with the huge cache of unreleased material in Sony/BMG's vaults, there
is no excuse. There was room for Horowitz's versions of Liszt's St Francis Walking on
the Water and Balakirev's Islamey, also recorded at these concerts. And this CD, like
many of Sony's new releases, is packaged in cheap paperboard - so handle with care.