Liszt: Sonata in B Minor, (Horowitz – 1932)

Vladimir Horowitz (1903 - 1989), piano November 11, 1932: Abbey Road Studio No.3, London, England (according to Naxos Music Library) 1. “Lento assai - Allegro energico - Grandioso“ : 0:00 2. “Andante sostenuto - Quasi adagio“ : 11:13 3. “Allegro energico - Più mosso“ : 17:21 4. “(Cantando espressivo) - Stretta quasi Presto - Presto“ : 21:31 5. “Andante sostenuto - Allegro moderato - Lento assai“ : 24:06 Historical context: Throughout his life and career, Vladimir Horowitz has always had a preference for Liszt. Do you know he played pieces like « Mazeppa », « La Campanella » or the « Dante Sonata » ? His American friend Alexander Steinert (1900 - 1982), whom Horowitz met in Paris in 1928, affirmed that « [Horowitz] had a real idolatry for Liszt, and always placed his portrait on [his] piano. » Let’s remember some important dates about Horowitz’s relation to Liszt: « After a few weeks in Berlin since April 1925, Vladimir’s dreams seem to be about to shatter against reality. His love of the romantic and passionately expressive piano goes against the Berlin fashion, of structured interpretations as unvirtuosic as possible. In other words, Vladimir is a nerd, with his way of playing and his unsuitable Russian repertoire: what to do? If he has doubts about the programs to propose, on the other hand, he remains unshakeable certainty: he must assert his personality and not imitate the greats: “I am what every artist should be: an individualist. I have heard and seen all the pianists and they have only negatively influenced me. I have criticized them and they had no effect on me. I have kept my personality like a piece of steel that no one has ever moved.“ This is indeed an unalterable trait of Vladimir Horowitz’s personality throughout his life. Remember the stubborn nature of the child, he has never doubted his talent or even himself. Merovitch, his agent and constant nanny encourages him in this direction. He thinks that this fashion for serious German piano will pass and that virtuosity has seductive virtues that are impossible to leave unmoved for long. He sedates Vladimir with the etymology of the word virtuosity: the possession of a virtue of unsurpassed quality. So to seduce the Germans, you have to catch them before the interval. For his first program, he recommended Liszt’s sonata to Vladimir that he performs for the first time on January 14, 1926, at the Beethovensaal. [...] In addition, Horowitz has played many times in concerts the two Liszt Concertos. Unfortunately, there are no recordings since he stopped playing n°1 in April 1928 and n°2 in December 1935, in Paris (and a last performance on February 8, 1944). After going to America and some European countries, he returns to Germany again, with less success than in 1925. He received a new round of criticism: a critic accused him of “misplaced frivolity with his boastful encores. Someone capable of giving Liszt’s sonata such grandeur, literally demonic, and of putting so much soul and poetry into Schubert, should not allow himself to be drawn into such virtuosity, not to say into frankly egocentric interpretations.“ [...] After having married Wanda Toscanini in 1933, the musical conversations between Horowitz and Toscanini become increasingly heated, when the maestro claims that Rachmaninoff is not a good composer and that Liszt is only a poseur. Yet, Liszt is more than ever a model for Horowitz: “He was a great musician, he knew everything. He could play everything and everything by heart. He is a character that one cannot even understand and I have that from people who met him like Glazunov who spent entire days with Liszt. He spent the whole day with him and he said that all the words they pronounced were aphorisms. Liszt and Paganini are the ones who made the most money at that time, and this man at the age of forty-two, and forty-three, left the stage, lost almost all his money and lived in poverty and he gave lessons, he had fantastic students and he didn’t ask for money, he was always in poverty and he helped everyone around him. He did it for Wagner, for everyone, for all the composers. I talked about it with Toscanini who said that it was a pose, a posture, that it wasn’t sincere. And even if it was a posture, it was a good one, right?! I don’t care why but he did it!.“» In November 1977, Horowitz gives a new lecture of the sonata and records it again (with better sound quality): Indeed, Horowitz was known for his constant desire to reinterpret and improve his performances (for instance the Ballade n°1 by Chopin was an obsession for him). The recording allows him to present his evolved musical vision of the sonata alongside some new Faure pieces. A few notes about my YouTube video : - The edition I used for this score video is an Urtext edition with fingerings of the composer included - Horowitz makes plenty of changes to the scores (cuts, simplifications, adds) that I did not mentioned.