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When this Carnegie Hall recital was recorded on November 16, 1975, Vladimir Horowitz had recently returned to RCA following an 11-year stint with CBS Masterworks, but for whatever reason, the performance was never released commercially. It took the efforts and technical savvy of producer Jon M. Samuels to make that happen, and his labors, presented on Horowitz Rediscovered, were certainly worthwhile. While Horowitz recorded many of the works on this program elsewhere, several are new to his RCA discography, and in any event, it's wonderful to have another live Horowitz recital to enjoy. It truly is a "live" recording, by the way, not a spliced-together amalgam -- Samuels simply reassembled the several tape segments he found in RCA's vaults. And, to be sure, there are more than a few finger slips and muddled notes to remind you of the performance's unfiltered nature. Horowitz had recently turned 72 when this recital took place, and he had lost some of the technical sparkle he enjoyed in his younger days. But he never lost his dramatic flair and the strong sense of personality he gave to everything he played, and that's certainly on full display here. The major work is Schumann's F Minor Sonata -- a thunderous performance, intense and impassioned. The warm-up to that is a lesser Schumann piece, Blumenstück (Flower-piece), and Horowitz lingers to make the most of each sweet-scented petal. The second disc brings pieces by Rachmaninoff, Liszt, and Chopin, followed by the expected round of encores -- works by Debussy, Moszkowski, more Rachmaninoff, and Schumann's well-known "Träumerei," which was a kind of Horowitz signature. He carried it off exquisitely, of course, yet slightly differently in each performance. Happily, we're now able to savor the way he played it on one remarkable Sunday afternoon in 1975. EJ Johnson, Barnes & Noble
© 2010 All Media Guide, LLC
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