Word: horowitz
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hadn't heard his name before," recalls Wanda. "A French lady was gazing at him, and I asked, 'Who is that?' She answered, 'Horowitz. He's a genius.'" At a private party, Wanda and Vladimir met again. He was shy and withdrawn, so he took refuge where he was most comfortable, at the piano, playing Chopin mazurkas. Wanda listened with a fascination that grew in intensity as, over the next few months, she heard him in both New York and Italy. At Milan's La Scala, Horowitz performed his signature concerto, the Rachmaninoff Third. "Then he came to visit...
...York City, 1928. Sir Thomas Beecham, the prickly British baronet and conductorial autodidact, was making his American debut in a concert with the New York Philharmonic. So was Horowitz. Beecham was apparently not about to let some upstart, unknown Russian steal his thunder, even if the piece was Tchaikovsky's thunderous Piano Concerto No. 1. Horowitz was unable to speak English, but it was clear from the rehearsals that even a translator would be no help. "Beecham thought I was of no importance," the pianist remembers. At the concert, the conductor adopted an even more ponderous tempo than during...
...went. From the opening bars of the finale, Horowitz raced ahead with all the mad passion of a cossack charge. "I played louder, faster and more notes than Tchaikovsky wrote," he later recalled. Beecham tried to rally, but there would be no catching up. "I was doing it my way. He was doing it his way," says Horowitz. "On the first night, Beecham came in second." The pianist finished several bars ahead of the orchestra. The audience erupted in a frenzy. In the New York Times, Music Critic Olin Downes captured the intensity of the moment. "A whirlwind of virtuoso...
...married an angel," he says. "She married a devil. There was much devil in me then." So there was. A relationship with a woman was an unusual experience for Horowitz, who was more comfortable in the company of men. As for Wanda, even a life of caddying for her fiery father had not prepared her for the emotional wringer she would go through with Horowitz. Despite the birth of their daughter Sonia in 1934, Horowitz's bisexuality ensured that the marriage was often stormy. They separated in 1949 and did not get back together permanently until 1953. "There were predictable...
Sonia was the tragic Horowitz. A pretty but moody girl with dark burning Toscanini eyes, she was her famed grandfather's favorite and could speak to him in a way that nobody else dared. The maestro once asked her whether she would prefer to be a conductor or a pianist. "A conductor," Sonia replied. "It's easier." She was naturally talented, adept at the piano, a good writer, accomplished at painting and photography. But she was emotionally unstable, and Toscanini's death in January 1957 grieved her deeply. Five months later, she was severely injured in a motor-scooter accident...