Various composers: Horowitz in Hamburg, The Final Concert

Vladimir Horowitz’s final public recital, recorded in Hamburg when he was 83, has lain almost untouched in the archives of North German Radio for twenty-one years. The concert consists of a selection of works by Mozart, Liszt, Chopin, Schubert and Schumann. Apparent from his programme choice, and also acknowledged by his biographer Harold Schonberg, Horowitz was “wise enough to realise that he could no longer be the thundering virtuoso…instead there was gentleness, an infinite variety of sound and flexibility of rhythm”. This gentleness is far from detrimental to the performance, he has chosen works that relish his delicacy and it shines through in all the works played here. Almost half of the concert has been filled with Mozart, a Rondo in D and Sonata in B-flat, a composer to whom Horowitz turned relatively late in life (presumably as an acceptance of his diminished strength). The sonata is simply a joy to listen to (and at 24’32, is no small undertaking); each long run of scale-like passage work is as clear as one could ever hope for. The rapturous applause at the end of the sonata is nothing but well-deserving. Pace and mood are shifted by Soirées de Vienne: Valse-Caprice no. 6 by Liszt (after Schubert) which follows the Mozart. There is a relaxed, rubatic feel to this work. Schumann’s Kinderszenen provides us with yet another side of Horowitz’s playing. There is a melancholic contemplation present throughout, the effect is beautiful to listen to. The disc also includes two encores, Schubert’s Moment musical in F minor and Etincelles by Moszkowski. As with the rest of the concert, one can only come away with vast admiration for such a legendary pianist.

About the recording

Vladimir Horowitz died in November 1989, less than a year after this Hamburg recital, making it one of the last documented performances of a pianist widely regarded as among the towering virtuosos of the 20th century. Born in Kyiv and trained there before building his career in the West, Horowitz was known across his long recording history for both extremes of interpretation, thunderous technical display in his younger years, and, as here, the more interior, rhythmically flexible playing of his final decades. The two-decade delay before this specific recital’s release, sitting untouched in a broadcaster’s archive, is not unusual for late-career live recordings from major artists of his generation, many of which only surfaced commercially well after the performer’s death.