Who Will Inherit the Throne of Vladimir Horowitz?

October 1 marks a double holiday, the International Day of Music and the 100th anniversary of the birth of the celebrated pianist.

The National Opera of Ukraine will host a concert in memory of the famous Kyivan, whose skill won him international acclaim. His debuts in Kyiv, Moscow, and St. Petersburg marked the beginning of the international career of Vladimir Horowitz. His non-acceptance of the Soviet government forced him into self-imposed exile. In 1928, he settled in America, where he found his second homeland. Although he toured many countries with his concerts, he did not visit his homeland until sixty years later. An acclaimed maestro and brilliant virtuoso, Vladimir Horowitz was a living legend in the West. He was deservedly dubbed a great romantic, the best pianist of the twentieth century, and the emperor of the piano. Despite the thousands of exalted reviews, his name was forbidden for many years in his homeland.

The virtuoso made his triumphal comeback on April 27, 1986. A recording was made of his concert. Despite his advanced age, Horowitz performed to perfection pieces by his favorite composers: Rachmaninoff, Skriabin, Scarlatti, Schuman, and Schubert. It was during this visit that Horowitz heard the performance by Mykhailo Pletniev and predicted a brilliant future for the pianist.

The founder and now honorary conductor of the Russian National Orchestra, author of subtle interpretations, and composer, Pletniev, ranks among the world’s greatest pianists of our time. Maestro Pletniev prepared a tour, Kyiv-Kharkiv-Kazan-Moscow-St. Petersburg, timed to coincide with the Horowitz centenary.

Accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (directed by Volodymyr Sirenko), Pletniev will perform Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 for Piano and Orchestra in the Kyiv Opera. This will be followed by performances of young laureates of the Vladimir Horowitz Memorial Piano Competition that was held for the fifth time last spring. Oleksandr Hryniuk (Ukraine) will perform Prokofiev’s Concerto No.1 for Piano and Orchestra, while Timur Shcherbakov (Belarus) and Chun Van Chin (China) will perform Mozart’s C-dur Concerto for Two Pianos. Such a program of the soiree is no accident, as Vladimir Horowitz was a close friend of Rachmaninoff’s and was the first to perform many of his compositions. “I’m a tree, but I don’t know how tall a tree I am. Meanwhile, Rachmaninoff is the tallest tree ever,” the maestro liked to say. Horowitz treated his repertoire with utmost responsibility. To illustrate, before recording one of Mozart’s concertos, he performed them all. American music critic David Dubal, a frequent guest in Horowitz’s home and author of Talking with Horowitz, in 2001 came to Kyiv to sit on the jury of the Vladimir Horowitz Competition. Speaking in an interview with The Day he shared many interesting aspects of maestro’s life off-stage. “Each time he played differently. Even today, when listening to the recordings of Horowitz, each will discover something new for himself. The maestro was quite bashful when surrounded by ecstatic admirers and to get rid of them he would often make faces. After a successful performance he could shout ‘Good, very good!’ and stickout his tongue to the orchestra. Because of the language barrier he found it difficult to get along with people. When meeting someone he would say: ‘I speak five languages, all equally bad.’ Many people who knew Vladimir Horowitz could not understand when he was joking and when not. For example, he would speak of Liszt and Chopin as if of his close friends and contemporaries. Or he could say categorically: ‘Never trust people who do not like Tchaikovsky’s music’.”

Amazingly, five days before he died Horowitz recorded for Sony etudes by Chopin and Liszt and a nocturne by Wagner displaying fantastic skill. He died at the age of eighty-six and was buried in a vault of a Tuscan family (he was married to a daughter of a famous Italian conductor). He has no surviving immediate relatives (his daughter died tragically during his life). His niece once removed, also a pianist, lives in England. The Horowitz archive is at Yale University, and his famous concert grand piano, a Steinway, which he always toured with, is in Sao Paolo. Thanks to the efforts of the Horowitz Fund, the name of the celebrated pianist has returned to Kyiv. To illustrate, competition director Yury Zilberman managed to fill in a few blank spots in the maestro’s biography. A birth certificate No. 752 dated October 1, 1903 was discovered in the city archives, which helped eliminate all inaccuracies. Thus, he was born in 1903 in Kyiv and not in 1904 in Berdychiv, as many encyclopedias claim. And most importantly, Kyiv has become the venue for the Vladimir Horowitz International Competition that brings to light new names of talented pianists. Who knows, perhaps one of its laureates will not only continue the traditions begun by Vladimir Horowitz, but will also become the world’s best pianist.