Horowitz Plays Scriabin

Absolutly beautiful performance of Scriabin music!Sc

Scriabin music is very dificult for interpretation,it's wery romantic and in the same time furious .Horowitz understand every second of Scriabin's passion.Thats amaising CD!...,it's like Malevich paintings,wery romantic and modern,just beautiful! October 9, 2007

what a recording!

It's impossible not to love this recording! I have for years, and it stands the test of time. I met Scriabin's music through this classic recording, played many of these pieces across the years, and return to it again and again as to a fountainhead. Say what you will about the art of Horowitz over the years, his handling of these Preludes and Etudes is inerrant. I've not heard another pianist play Scriabin with such intimacy and understanding, Richter included. The alchemy that was Horowitz's alone is in unpartitioned play from beginning to end. His inscrutable ear lets him choose one miniature masterpiece after another, each one vital to his master plan, in the end not only revealing Scriabin's mastery of musical thought, but giving us an indelible guide to Horowitz's own genius. If you want to understand the contribution of Horowitz, walk past his others straight to THIS Scriabin disc, AND the Horowitz Plays Scarlatti disc. For me, these two recordings provide unique evidence of this pianist's most revealing gifts. The B-major Prelude is beautiful enough to melt stone. This recording reminds me of Gould's recording of Byrd and Gibbons - unexpected and perfect, and impossible to live without. In a world on overload, the music made here is witness of a great art. Don't delay the indisputable experience.
March 4, 2007

From Byronic to Orgiastic

Vladimir Horowitz was a champion of Scriabin's music long before it became fashionable, or even semi-fashionable. Scriabin's music appeared on Horowitz's programs as early as the 1920s.

Horowitz's first issued Scriabin recordings were made at his 25th Anniversary Concert in 1953 (also his last public recital until his famous comeback in 1965). The B-flat minor, and C-sharp minor Etudes are given more turbulent performances than usual. There is a great deal brewing beneath the surface. At times, it seems like Horowitz is trying to burst past his own flesh. The desperate passion of his performance lends credence to the notion that he was approaching a nervous breakdown.

The sixteen Preludes were recorded in 1956. (Actually, eighteen Preludes were recorded at these sessions, but two were placed on another album.) Horowitz chose to program the Preludes in a canny sequence of contrasts and surprises building to a climax, rather than sequentially. The Preludes start in the Chopinesque mode, becoming Wagnerian and epic, before dissolving into atonality - - revealing the scope of Scriabin's development.

The Sonata No. 3, also from 1956, is given a broadly phrased, brooding, Byronic performance. The relaxed pacing of the first movement allows Horowitz to move through the various "soul states" without splintering the structure. Contrast the way Horowitz plays the second movement, using the pedal to skillfully blend harmonies, to the way Askhenazy unimaginatively plunks the piece out. (In this movement, Horowitz makes a small cut in the score which actually improves structural clarity.) The transition between the third movement (truly an example of a musical "calm before the storm") is handled with exceptional skill, and Horowitz makes the last movement exciting without over stressing compositional points. Througout the Preludes and Sonata, the balance and poise of the playing speak volumes about Horowitz's post-1953 recovery.

Horowitz played Scriabin's Fifth Sonata during the 1975-1976 season. In his 70s, the pianist sacrifices nothing to age in the most orgiastic performance of this sensual piece ever committed to disc. Scriabin was synesthetic (meaning that he could hear colors) and the musical colors in this piece border on the lurid. This is easily one of the finest recordings from the pianist's late period.

The popular Etude in D-sharp minor, Op. 8, No. 12, played as an encore at Horowitz's 1982 London concert, is given a performance which seduces before building to an explosive climax.

The sound varies, from a bit confined in the 1956 recordings (made in Horowitz's living room) to spacious in the stereo items.
November 6, 2005

Horowitz - the best or real close to it

Listening to this cd put me on a higher plane regarding beauty.
There is no doubt that I will purchase more of "Horowitz plays...". And these preformances are relatively inexpensive. And for such quality, that is a rarity. October 4, 2005

An original approach

Vladimir Horowitz is not in my ten top keyboard giants from the past. But, in this case it's fair to make a sincere rendition to this album.
Horowitz was a cosmpolitan citizen. That's is an very important detail and I 'll tell you why.
The Scriabin's school pianists Sofronitzky, Nehaus among others saw in him a russian Chopin. And I disagree with that opinion.
Scriabin was a sensitive artist , but also a major colorist than Chopin was and ever a convinced man opened to experience new sounds.
The musical influences received by Scriabin were in multiple directins. Wagner , Mahler, Bruckner opened new musical spaces in the new composers.
Besides Scriabin and its sense he links with Rachmaninov; he didn't get so far from the romantic tradition; and he dindn't join to the avant garde composers as Stravinsky, for instance.
He liked to experience but without his roots.
So that view in the school russian pianistic permeated this conception in pupils as Richter.
It's fair to establish a hidden neuroses in Scriabin's music and that's not a critical judgement.
The point to remark is that Horowitz, never considered this opinion, precisely to his countless exchange ideas with the world outside the provincial Russia.
And that's why his Scriabin sounds less ecletic and more multidimensional than the re3st of his coleagues, including Richter and Gilels; his Scriabin is in many ways out of control and less influenced of the chopinian view. It sounds you less romantic and more universal.
Only Richter in the seventies could escape from that view and pianist as MichAel Ponti , Mijail Rudy or Ivo Porgorelch have understood so.
Listen to Lazar Berman and you'll feel the Nehaus approach.
This is the great virtue of this recording.
But a warning; be carefully with a performance given for Horowitz in Carnegie Hall May 9 1965; because in many ways he seems to return to the chopinisque atmosphere when he played Scriabin in that recital.
A must in your collection. Don't miss it. May 23, 2004

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