Vladimir Horowitz

In all his long career Horowitz has probably never before had to play against competition from the Pope, but of course the Festival Hall was packed for the second of his Saturday tea-time recitals, and no doubt it would be so if he appeared every week in London, not just twice in a generation.

Surely his only reason for keeping himself scarce must be that more standing ovations would embarrass him, for at his recitals they are de rigueur. His showmanship demands a similarly spectacular response, and all is thoroughly justified by his confident ability to delight his audience in his unique manner. Where others play piano music he simply plays piano, and it seemed almost an irrelevance that here he was choosing sonatas by Scarlatti, some Chopin, some Liszt and two Rachmaninoff preludes, for what he was really performing was Horowitz.

An attempt to follow his performance of the Chopin F minor ballade in the score was foiled, for the notes on paper seemed quite alien and confusing behind the dazzling clarity and personality of the sounds. And though in this and other performances there were accidents that betrayed age, everywhere there was the special distinction of melody so vivid, alive and fundamental that it would be a discourtesy to call it song-like: rather this was a model that no singer could match.

Perhaps Horowitz's secret lies in how each note blooms after the attack, so that its weight is shifted into the resonance. But it is impossible to explain the subtler effects: the tentative fragility on the very edge of being awkward, the rampant power that never sounds forced or obliges the instrument to be less than beautiful, the layers of pearl screen and silk that Horowitz can draw and disclose to change and charm his sound, or the ironies that can steal in to reveal him not only as angel but as divine clown. (Times, 31 May 1982)