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It's a fairly wild performance, with a few clangers here and there. It's interesting, though I'm not sure I really love it. Seems a little underprepared for the recording.
It's a fairly wild performance, with a few clangers here and there. It's interesting, though I'm not sure I really love it. Seems a little underprepared for the recording.
Horowitz did plenty of wildness and clanging in a lot of pieces. And where did you get that it was a recording? It doesn't actually say it anywhere-could be a live performance.
The recording is allegedly from the 1970s, a time during which messiness was moreso than usual a part of Horowitz's trademark sound. There's a lot in this recording that is obviously Horowitzian - the dryness of the fast passages, the attack of the low bass octaves, etc.
I know he programmed this particular piece a lot in his younger days. Now if we could only hear him playing the first two movements - I'm already in love with the imaginary recording of Horowitz playing Ondine that exists only in my head!
But then we wouldn't be able to listen to it would we?
"And if we look at the works of J.S. Bach — a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity... -Debussy
"It's ok if you disagree with me. I can't force you to be right."
The recording is allegedly from the 1970s, a time during which messiness was moreso than usual a part of Horowitz's trademark sound. There's a lot in this recording that is obviously Horowitzian - the dryness of the fast passages, the attack of the low bass octaves, etc.
I know he programmed this particular piece a lot in his younger days. Now if we could only hear him playing the first two movements - I'm already in love with the imaginary recording of Horowitz playing Ondine that exists only in my head!
I too would love to hear him play Ondine. The piece has been my obsession for years and I've tried to listen to every recording under the sun, and I'm very picky with it; I only find a handful of performances to be "definitive." Many of my favorites are not played by the usual suspects either.
Last edited by didyougethathing; 04/28/1301:12 PM.
The recording is allegedly from the 1970s, a time during which messiness was moreso than usual a part of Horowitz's trademark sound. There's a lot in this recording that is obviously Horowitzian - the dryness of the fast passages, the attack of the low bass octaves, etc.
I know he programmed this particular piece a lot in his younger days. Now if we could only hear him playing the first two movements - I'm already in love with the imaginary recording of Horowitz playing Ondine that exists only in my head!
I too would love to hear him play Ondine. The piece has been my obsession for years and I've tried to listen to every recording under the sun, and I'm very picky with it; I only find a handful of performances to be "definitive." Many of my favorites are not played by the usual suspects either.
Haha, likewise! And since my own command of the piece has improved, I find that my taste in performances has changed too. I certainly heard Ondine differently before I could play it and became intimately acquainted with the score.
....plus, if he had really played Scarbo any time in the last 50 years, it wouldn't be unknown to us.
The recording supposedly comes from the extensive vaults of Horowitz recordings at Yale, and who knows what else is locked away in there. It doesn't sound like a really professional/properly mastered recording, most likely it was informal. According to this website, the last time he played Scarbo in public was in 1940, but perhaps in the 70s he was considering bringing it back into his concert rep, practiced it and decided not to play it for some reason, and this recording is from a rehearsal of some sort.
This sounds nothing like Horowitz, IMHO. As broken as he was in 1983 (Japan), the tendencies were still recognizably Horowitz.
I'd say this sounds pretty distinctively like Horowitz - it's in the dryness of the middle and upper register and the booming/clanging of the low registers - listen at around 2:48, only Horowitz could play that low octave like that. The climax around 4:40 has Horowitz written all over it. If it really were a fake, whoever faked it did a damn good job of studying and imitating Horowitz's tendencies.
