Favorite Chopin
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CD Details
Composer: Frederic ChopinPerformer: Vladimir Horowitz
Edition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2004-08-03
Music Label: Sony
Music reviews of Favorite Chopin
Music Review: Horowitz near his prime
Rating: 5 Stars
Vladimir Horowitz (who had a Polish grandmother and was fond of pointing out that he was "half as much a Pole as Chopin") devoted more recordings to the music of Chopin than that of any other composer.
Horowitz considered the Mazurkas to be Chopin's greatest works, and often stated that there was more music in the shortest Chopin Mazurka than in the longest Mahler Symphony. The pianist treated the Mazurkas less as dance pieces than as "dance-fantasies" and his playing of the works was freer than the more straightforward Rubinstein. Highlights of this set include a seductive F-sharp Minor, Op. 59 No. 3.
Horowitz made several recordings of the ever popular A-flat Polonaise, and this one adheres most closely to Chopin's text. The introduction is very sparsely pedalled (as if Horowitz were saying "Look! I can play the tricky introduction without using the pedal to cover up insufficient fingerwork. Take THAT, Rubinstein!"). The remainder of the piece goes with gusto and flair (too fast to be a Maestoso), but he somehow misses the grandeur which Rubinstein brought to the piece--and which Horowitz himself would attain in his last years. The A-major Polonaise is also taken at a fast clip, but this somehow seems more appropriate to this work, and one is reminded of Chopin's remark that if he were able to play the piece the way he meant it to be played, the piano would lay in ruins afterward.
If anyone thought Horowitz, then approaching 70, had lost any of his fire, their worries were quickly dispelled with the Etudes recorded in 1972. The C-sharp Minor goes at a rapid clip, but unlike many pianists, there is no loss of clarity. The famous Revolutionary Etude is given a more outwardly virtuosic performance then the pianist's 1963 recording, yet somehow the piece has less impact here. Two later Etudes, from Horowitz's last recording in 1989, are uneven. Horowitz is technically and musically on top of the A-flat Etude, but the E Minor Etude suffers from an overstressed ending.
The ubiquitous C-sharp Minor Waltz is from the Boston concert of April 7, 1968. Three days previously, the Reverend Martin Luther King had been murdered in Memphis. At the beginning of this concert, Horowitz came onstage with an African-American minister, and played Chopin's Funeral March in memory of Dr. King.
The tightly controlled B-minor Scherzo, from 1963, ends with a characteristically Horowitzian touch: Interlocking octaves replace Chopin's chromatic scales in the coda, to thrilling effect.
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