Word from Horowitz

When Vladimir Horowitz walked from the Carnegie Hall stage into retirement nine years ago, he continued to talk for a while with his audience through recordings. Then, because of differences with RCA Victor, the recordings also stopped, and the pianist's worshipful fans were left to guess the results of the painstaking restudy of piano literature that he had undertaken. Part of the answer is on a new Columbia LP. Officially released last week on the occasion of Horowitz' 58th birthday, it stirred such interest that it had sold some 15,000 copies by week's end.

For his first recording in three years, Horowitz selected works of composers with whom he has long been identified--Chopin's Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Rachmaninoff's Etude-Tableau in C Major and Etude-Tableau in E-Flat Minor, Schumann's Arabesque, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. ig. In all of them Horowitz triumphantly demonstrates that whatever it is that keeps him from the concert stage, it is surely not failing artistic power. The glittering, steely technique is still there; Horowitz can play the piano with a strength and a seething air of controlled violence that no other pianist can match. But he also seems less concerned with surfaces, more concerned with the simplicities that lie beneath them for a reflective eye to see.

In the years of his retirement, the "most interesting" of his life, Horowitz has practiced practically every morning in his Manhattan house; he feels that his playing has become considerably more relaxed than it was when he was on the concert stage. Much of the rest of his time he passes listening to an immense record collection--his most recent interest is in old opera recordings--or playing canasta with his wife. Toscanini's daughter Wanda. He plans to make more records for Columbia. "Since I don't appear before the public now," he says, "I want to make each record like a recital; I want to give lots of styles, music from different centuries."

In fact, the immediately favorable response to his present album has made Horowitz consider more seriously a return to the concert hall. "Oh, yes," he says, "it is very possible that I will play, but I don't want to travel." And he will probably give his public scant warning of what would surely be the most dramatic and talked-about recital of the year. "I would like," says Horowitz, "to announce an appearance quite modestly--and at the last minute."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.