Horowitzian,
Would you still be interested in my story about the day that I played the piano for Vladimir Horowitz? I thought that it might be best to start a new thread on this subject as other forum members may have similar stories to share.

regards,

I'm not Horowitzian but I'm interested =p

YEs!

+1

Sure, how much did he pay you?

Tell us!

Oh yeah, well... I had Chopin for a teacher!
/jk Im bored and really want to hear your story

Never mind.

LOL! What a tease!

I'm eagerly awaiting a creatively written historical story to read during my lunch break!

I would love to read it too!

What, do you think I'm the sort of person to lose interest in something Horowitz-related?

Tell us!!

Unfortunately, I think this was only a joke.

The good news is that old Uncle Russ actually did dream that he had a close encounter of that kind with the great Horowitz. I was a child prodigy in San Antonio when he came through in the early 'fifties. My ambitious father pulled some strings to get me a visit. I was ushered into his presence where he was seated at a table--scowling. I naturally felt somewhat shy--but my father put me up on the piano bench and I played a Chopin etude. At this, Horowitz looked up at me with a faint smile on his face and said: "Boy, can you play a Bach figure?" I played a prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier and he then asked if I could transpose it into another key. Fortunately I was able to do so.

Whereupon Mr. Horowitz rose from his chair, came over and ruffled my hair and planted a kiss on my head. He looked off into the distance and said: "Russ, you are one of the fortunate ones--you will make many people's lives happy."

I wonder how I could have dreamed such a thing.

Russ

Now, why can't I have dreams like that?

Horowitzian: That actually tracks pretty closely the story Liszt tells about his meeting with Beethoven when he was eleven. He was in Vienna, with of course, Czerny as his piano teacher and Salieri as his theory teacher. Czerny set up the visit with Beethoven and it went pretty much as my "dream" sequence--except that after playing Bach at LVB's request and doing the transposition, he asked Beethoven for permission to play something of his--to which the great man assented. After the recital was when Beethoven told him he would go far and kissed him. (Some biographers have said that LVB delivered the kiss at a concert later that evening but that appears not to have been true.)

Supposedly, that meeting was a source of great inspiration to Liszt (and why wouldn't it have been!) along with the fact that his mother told him he was destined for greatness due to the great comet that appeared the year he was born. He would tear up when he spoke about that meeting--sixty years after the fact.

There was no comet in the sky the year I was born, so that must account for my lack of technique.

Regards,

Russ

That's amazing how well the two stories line up...wow! Thanks so much for sharing.

I met with Chopin.

I heard Chopin speak! Right here on this very forum. By the way Russ, it is a fact that, Liszt, visited, Beethoven, as a boy, but there's quite a lot of doubt about, Beethoven's presence at the recital (and some biographers believe Liszt added the kiss).

I didn't think so, actually. I thought tuner2 was put off by D4v3's dismissive answer.
So, tuner2, if you're still there, yes please - plenty of us want to hear your story.

Amen!!!!!! Don't let one person put you off.

Yes!!! By all means, if you really have a story to tell, do tell!

Please, pretty please - - -

stores: You are correct that some biographers do not believe that the Weihekuss ever took place. Alan Walker, in his definitive 3-volume biography does believe it, but debunks that Beethoven walked up on the stage that night--he has pretty definitive proof that Beethoven (who apparently couldn't stand prodigies) never attended the later concert. There have been so many contradictions written throughout the some 10,000 books and periodicals written about Liszt, many of which he did his best to debunk during his lifetime, that Walker believes he would not have fabricated the story. But it is true that Liszt only wrote about it once in his entire life.

tuner2: I will also ask to tell your story--I hope you were not offended by my thinking it was a joke--because you did not return. I even promise if you tell your story, I will stop hijacking your thread.

I myself actually had a close encounter with greatness once long ago. (This is NOT a joke like my "dream" post!) It was back in either 1959 or '60. My mother had dropped me off early for a piano lesson. My teacher frequently rehearsed visiting soloists for the local orchestra. He met me at the door and told me my lesson had to be cancelled, but to come in and be very, very quiet. When we went in, a white-haired man was playing at my teacher's Steinway B, and he stopped playing and turned on the stool. My teacher introduced me to Arthur Rubinstein. Mr. Rubinstein nodded but said nothing to me and turned back to the piano. I sat there for 45 minutes, trying to blend into woodwork until my mother came for me.

I was terrified that he might ask me to play for him. That did not happen--and I can verify that had he heard me play the two Chopin pieces I knew, he would most certainly NOT have kissed me!

Russ

Russ, your brush with pianistic greatness tops mine, but I do have one: When I was in Jr. High School, my friend's mother was the PR person for the local symphony... I got to go along once to pick up Andre Watts from the airport and rode with him in the back seat to the concert hall. Nice guy (at least on that occasion).

Wow, and you absolutely promise that story isn't a joke?

I'd have been scared spitless (to borrow my own teacher's expression) in that situation!

I take it you didn't slam his finger in the car door!

Please tell us. My only brush with greatness was seeing John Ogden(joint winner with Vladimir Ashkenazy of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition) play Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto with the Halle Orchestra a few years before his death. A large man, he shuffled and struggled onto the stage and looked very large but was slow and looked awful. My grandmother took me to the concert and said later he could hear him sighing and puffing out of breath(it turned out later he had diabetes which killed him but was undiagnosed.

Horowitzian: Scout's honor it is a true story. I actually did not realize the importance of who it was until later--much later in fact, when my mother bought an LP that had his picture on the front of it--I think the same series of photos that appear on all of the CD covers nowadays. When it happened, I just knew he was some important old man who was going to play with the symphony--and to me that was scary enough. Hell, in those days, I hated Chopin--not macho enough for me. Now I wish I could remember what he was practicing. Now, I have always wished I could remember that it was Chopin. But I'm certain that he would not have bothered to consult with anyone on a Chopin solo piece. And in retrospect, I think it must have been a concerto because my teacher would occasionally play on the other piano and they would play together--and one of my teacher's jobs was to rehearse visitor's parts with the orchestra and then consult with them prior to the performance.

My impression of him was that he was a small man--but he never stood and I don't know much about him. But as I recall, he could get a tolerable amount of sound out that Steinway!

So maybe it was a manly piece by Beethoven.

Russ

Haha! No, but I also must confess that like Russ, I did not appreciate the meeting as I might have. I was simply told that he was a big deal, but had no other context.

Rubenstein and Watts probably appreciated not being fawned over and were glad for the ignorance.