Original Jacket Collection - Various Works

Vladimir Horowitz pf

Sony Classical (70 CDs) 88697 57500-2 Buy now

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For countless people, Horowitz has always been a pianistic god – a fallible deity, to be sure, but a paragon in terms of tonal colouring, technical brilliance, musical imagination and the ability to astonish and move audiences in equal measure. For younger readers it is difficult to explain just how celebrated Horowitz was. He died in 1989 but for many pianists his playing of certain composers and works remains the model to aspire to. He is still a palpable influence. ‘Horowitzian’ is a well-worn adjective in these pages. 

The Original Jacket Collection is a joint venture between Sony and RCA. The 70 CDs contain most of Horowitz’s American recordings issued on the RCA, Columbia, CBS and Sony labels between 1928 and 1989 (so no HMV or DG). Each disc is a facsimile of the original LP packaging including sleeve-notes (in microscopic typeface) but not the essays that came with LP box sets. An initial reaction is of open-jawed amazement – all these old friends from one’s teenage years and beyond in miniaturised form. It is a beautifully produced and stunningly designed set of recordings. On closer inspection, however, all is not quite what it seems – and there are aspects of the project that could have been done better. 

Space precludes an appraisal of the performances on all 70 discs. These have, in any case, been well covered in Gramophone over the years (a visit to www.gramophone.net is suggested). Horowitz collectors will have most of these recordings, with their more than 440 separate titles, but not the two complete recitals given on March 5, 1951, and November 12, 1967. These are previously unreleased (except for two short works from each concert) and include a Prokofiev Sonata No 7 and Chopin’s Polonaise in C sharp minor, Op 26 No 1. The 1976 ‘Concert of the Century’ celebrating the 85th anniversary of Carnegie Hall with Bernstein, Rostropovich, Fischer-Dieskau et al is here, as well as ‘The Young Horowitz’ LP back in the catalogue with the earliest American recordings and Kabalevsky’s Sonata No 3. Omitted are the recently published recordings of Schumann’s Fantaisie (1946), Balakirev’s Islamey and Liszt’s St Francis Walking on the Water (both revised by Horowitz and new to his discography), and other still-unreleased performances such as the Kreisler-Rachmaninov Liebesleid.

Inevitably, there is much duplication of repertoire, reflecting Horowitz’s own musical preference over the years – two Mussorgsky Pictures, the two Tchaikovsky Firsts with Toscanini, two Rach Threes (the glorious 1951 version with Reiner and the unfortunate 1978 travesty with Ormandy), four Kinderszenens and, an extreme example, Debussy’s Serenade for the Doll, which appears six times. The historic 1965 ‘Carnegie Hall Return Concert’ appears on CDs 42a/b and 57a/b, one version edited for clinkers, the other not. Buyers should be aware that these are not 70 CDs with 70- or even 60-plus minutes of music, inevitable if the producers were to preserve the integrity of the original LP format. Six discs have less than 30 minutes of music on them, 60 of them less than 50 minutes. The transfers appear to be the same as those previously released on CD.