10. April 2023, 10:05
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He was, of course, a child prodigy – even if he didn’t want to have been one. Born in Berditchev in 1903, Vladimir Horowitz grew up in Kiev and in a musical Jewish family. The Russian Revolution ruined the wealthy Gorowitz family, which is why he finished his piano studies at the age of 17 and began giving concerts.
With his virtuosity and challenging pieces, he conquers his audience in no time. Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Schumann, Scriabin and Bach arranged by Busoni are his favorite composers. In 1926 he made his debut in Berlin under the name Horowitz. In Hamburg he stepped in – without a rehearsal – for a sick pianist and had his breakthrough with a Tchaikovsky concerto. “In the end, the wing lay on the podium like a stabbed dragon,” writes his friend Abram Chasins. After that, his career continued in Paris and throughout Europe, and from 1928 also in America.
The audience is entranced, musicians and critics are amazed: by his unbelievable finger acrobatics, the completely new piano sound, the intensity of his playing. About the unusual way of playing with outstretched fingers. Over the next few years, Horowitz traveled non-stop from one recital to the next. In 1933 he married Toscanini’s daughter Wanda and gave brilliant concerts with his father-in-law Arturo Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic. Shortly after the beginning of the war he moves to New York for good.
But what about his legendary performance breaks – the longest twelve years, from 1953 to 63? With his nervous crises, stage fright, homosexual tendencies? In her documentary novel about Horowitz and his first student Nico Kaufmann in the late 1930s, the writer and cultural historian Lea Singer drew attention to the drama of his denied homosexuality. A drama that continues in America leading to therapeutic sessions including electric shocks.
In this radio feature by Renate Maurer, the maestro himself can be heard in American interview excerpts, as can the late music critic Joachim Kaiser. Maurer met Lea Singer for an interview and the music critic Eleonore Büning. The American pianist, lecturer and radio journalist David Dubal talks about his “Evenings with Horowitz” in his New York apartment in the 1980s.
HOROWITZ
Approaching a star pianist
By Renate Maurer
Tone: Fridolin Stolz
Editing: Elisabeth Stratka
Interview with David Dubal in New York: Alexander Rauscher-Nachwalger
WH from 27.11.21
