Word: pianos
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...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 He was shy and withdrawn, so he took refuge where he was most comfortable, at the piano, playing Chopin mazurkas.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 my father, and, as they...
...secret of Horowitz's appeal is twofold. His phenomenal technique, regarded by piano connoisseurs as the most dazzling since Franz Liszt set the standard of virtuosity in the mid-19th century, gets the listeners into the tent. Horowitz could always do anything he wanted at the keyboard, whether pounding out octaves or rippling off scales in thirds. But mere technique is not enough. Just as Luciano Pavarotti's high notes, in the tenor's prime several years ago, were backed up by a gorgeous liquid tone and a supple sense of phrasing, so Horowitz's pianism offers many subtleties...
...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 the preparation. As the concerto...
...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 in Italy. In 1974 she was in another motor-vehicle accident, this one in Switzerland, and she died...
...freer and better than anything they had before." Wanda is at once mother, sister, friend, wife, adviser and sweetheart, guarding her husband against any real or perceived lèse majesté. "In the end," notes another family friend, "she believes faithfully and passionately that his genius is to play the piano like no one else around...