Pianists: Concerto for Pianist & Audience

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Allegro. He is born on Musikalnyi Peruelok — Music Street — in Kiev. His uncle is a music critic, his mother a brilliant amateur pianist. At the age of ten he memorizes the piano scores of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Parsifal. Clearly, little Vladimir is a musical prodigy.

Fortunately, Papa Horowitz has plenty of rubles. Vladimir is sent to the Kiev Conservatory to prepare for a leisurely musical career — so leisurely that when he graduates the family makes plans for him to study another ten years before contemplating concert work.

But in Moscow there are other forces, other plans. When the revolution comes, Papa's bank account, position, all go into the Red. The family must eat; Vladimir, the hothouse flower, protected and indulged during his first 17 years, blossoms into a full-time professional pianist at 18. Only 200 people —most of them admitted free — attend his first concert. At the second, there are more paying customers. The third is a sellout. The career and the reputation gather velocity but not money. Vladimir is paid with bread, sausages, clothing; he is, literally, the family breadwinner.

He goes to Berlin, where he is a sensation, and to Paris, where they pay him in francs instead of franks.

In 1928, the slim, tense 24-year-old makes his American debut at Carnegie Hall with the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in B Flat Minor. The conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham, takes the tempo slowly, deliberately. Horowitz's fingers are like coiled springs of Russian steel; they tear with trip-hammer speed and force across the keys, and in the last movement he arrives at the end four measures ahead of the orchestra. The audience roars its affection for the impatient pianist; it is the beginning of a lifelong affair. Even the crusty Beecham cracks a smile. Paderewski calls Horowitz the best of the younger generation. Rachmaninoff and Ravel applaud him.

In 1933 he marries Wanda, daughter of Arturo Toscanini. Father-and sonin-law perform together. Their concerts are sellouts, their records collectors' items. Money, fame, esteem—everything comes quickly to Horowitz—except English. At the White House, when he is presented to Mrs. Hoover, he bows and says, "I am delightful." And so he is.

Largo. Occasionally Horowitz finds himself seized with a sickening stage fright. He asks the manager of one concert hall to tell the audience that Mr. Horowitz cannot appear. Tell them yourself, says the miffed manager. Horowitz tries: he goes to center stage, looks out over the blob of faces, opens his mouth—and then dashes for the safe harbor of his grand piano.

His technique is flawless, but his repertory grows slick and showy. The fingers remain like coiled springs; the man, too, is tense and overwound. He refuses to fly, cannot rest on trains. His fee rises from $500 to $3,000 per concert; he works only six months a year and never gives more than two concerts a week. Still, the springs keep tightening, the stomach keeps churning. Hypochondria becomes real illness. There is an injured finger, tonsillitis, flu, a stomach ailment—then, abruptly, the spring breaks, the mechanism winds down, the long pyrotechnics stop short. Horowitz takes a vacation. The vacation becomes a sabbatical, the sabbatical a leave of absence, the leave an adieu.