Chopin by Horszowski : Through text and sound

Piano International (Jan, 2014)
A complex, reticent man whose fame arrived late in life, Mieczys?aw Horszowski (1892-1993) shared some artistic similarities in his renditions of Chopin with Arthur Rubinstein, a pianist with whom he otherwise had little in common. Both performers offered thick-toned, sonorous versions of Chopin, inspired by the legacy of Romantic opera – as Chopin himself was. Horszowski’s playing was not itself operatic in any over-emotional way, even though he could teeter on the brink of barely suppressed hysteria in extreme old age. Instead, there is lilting lyricism in some of these excerpts, caught on the fly during recitals (1967-1990) and captured in less-than-ideal sound. In a 1980 concert in Pistoia, Italy, …