{"id":1485,"date":"2019-08-31T15:12:37","date_gmt":"2019-08-31T19:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1485"},"modified":"2019-09-03T18:45:24","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T22:45:24","slug":"what-happened-between-vladimir-horowitz-and-george-szell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2019\/08\/what-happened-between-vladimir-horowitz-and-george-szell.html","title":{"rendered":"What Happened Between Vladimir Horowitz and George Szell?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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George Szell<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs admirers of Horowitz\u2019s musicianship and resilience, we must face these realities remembering that, in the end, he loaded his baggage onto his back and jogged across the finish line, smiling from ear to ear. Today, the weight of Horowitz\u2019s baggage serves mainly to accentuate the magnitude of his ultimate triumph.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus Bernard Horowitz on Vladimir Horowitz. These two are unrelated. Bernard, however, happens to be my son Bernie \u2013 whose obsession with Vladimir has been the topic of numerous filings<\/a><\/strong> in this space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been many years since Bernie began plying me with\nrare Horowitz recordings in an attempt to bludgeon me toward a more favorable\nopinion. As I have conceded, he\u2019s met with some success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recent Sony Classical Horowitz release \u2013 “The Great Comeback: <\/a><\/strong>Horowitz at Carnegie Hall” \u2013 comprises 15 CDs and an elegantly illustrated 200-page booklet. In a formidable review<\/a><\/strong> the other day in Spain\u2019s El Pais<\/em>, Pablo Rodriguez cited Bernie\u2019s Sony essay at length. Truly, as Rodriguez writes, it more clarifies Horowitz\u2019s epic 12-year retirement (1953-65) than anything previously written. The details are remarkable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For one thing, there was an incident with George Szell, whom Horowitz (Bernie writes)  resented for his \u201cingratitude and nastiness towards artists \u2013 including Toscanini and Rubinstein \u2013 who had helped him financially and professionally after he escaped Nazi Germany.\u201d When Dmitri Mitropoulos suffered a heart attack, Szell was (inexplicably) chosen by the New York Philharmonic to partner Horowitz in Tchaikovsky\u2019s B-flat minor Piano Concerto (which Szell loathed) for the Horowitz Silver Jubilee on January 12, 1953. The broadcast recording<\/a><\/strong> of that performance documents a singular feat of symphonic accompaniment: to my ears, a conductor caustically intent on driving every bit as fast as his hurtling soloist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterward there was a party at Horowitz\u2019s apartment. As\nBernie writes (quoting a private tape of Horowitz in bitter reminiscence): \u201cSzell\nand his wife . . . walked into the Horowitz\u2019s living and room and beheld\nHorowitz\u2019s favorite painting: \u2018The Acrobat in Repose\u2019 by Pablo Picasso. Mr. and\nMrs. Szell exclaimed, \u2018Aha! You see what painting they have here? You see what\npainting they have here?! It\u2019s just like the pianist!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This vituperative outburst coincided with self-doubts Bernie\nalso documents: opting for Prokofiev, Barber, Kabalevsky and other moderns,\nHorowitz had shifted his attention away from Classical and Romantic repertoire;\nhe had opted for a more brilliant instrument; he was experiencing qualms about\n\u201cthe trajectory of his career.\u201d He retired from the stage six weeks later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some four years after that, Horowitz\u2019s daughter Sonia attempted\nsuicide on a motor scooter in Italy. Horowitz\u2019s apparently callous response has\nnever made any sense. But Bernie connects this to the tragedy of his brother,\nJacob, a hospitalized World War I veteran whom Vladimir had visited daily before\nJacob hung himself. Bernie has additionally uncovered poignant documents\nshowing that Horowitz, \u201can absentee father during Sonia\u2019s adolescence,\u201d bonded\nwith his daughter in New York shortly before she departed for Italy and her\nnear-fatal accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These revelations in Bernie\u2019s Sony essay hint at a larger\nportrait he has unearthed of a young artist unmoored by the Russian Revolution\n(which decimated his family), then coping for decades with demons of every\ndescription \u2013 and yet ultimately renewed upon returning to Russia, and to his\npersonal and artistic roots, at the age of 82. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAs admirers of Horowitz\u2019s musicianship and resilience, we must face these realities remembering that, in the end, he loaded his baggage onto his back and jogged across the finish line, smiling from ear to ear. Today, the weight of Horowitz\u2019s baggage serves mainly to accentuate the magnitude of his ultimate triumph.\u201d Thus Bernard Horowitz on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1485","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-nX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1509,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions\/1509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}