BBC Legends BBCL 4230-2, 76:58 (Distrib. Koch) ****:
If ever a musician could be “venerated,” it would have to be Mieczyslaw Horszowski (1892-1993), the Polish virtuoso who excelled as solo pianist, teacher, and accompanist, and whose “staying power” at his chosen instrument lasted 80 years. A pupil of Theodor Leschetizky, Horszowski mastered every degree of nuanced keyboard playing without percussiveness, and the entire Slavic-German repertory lay under his command. This CD splices together two appearances by Horszowski at the Aldeburgh Festival: the Casals, Chopin Sonata, and Bach transcription derive from a recital given 9 June 1984. The rest of the program derives from a recital program three years later, 21 June 1987.
Horszowski opens with an homage to his dear friend, Pablo Casals – an extensive Prelude that plays like a nocturne, dramatic in parts with touches of what sound like Rachmaninov’s famed C-sharp Minor effort. Horszowski takes a broad tempo for the first movement of the Chopin B Minor, allowing Chopin’s modal counterpoint to shine through as well as the second subject to bask in burnished space. The development becomes thick without succumbing to metrical sag or emotional pretentiousness. Horszowski has a few finger slips in the gnarly Scherzo, which he takes rather gingerly. Despite the flaws, the music enjoys the contours of a water-piece, Debussy not far away. The third movement Largo seeks a balance of nocturne and barcarolle, in which Horszowski imbues the repeated arpeggios and colored chords with timeless, singing reverie. Herculean efforts move the Presto movement forward, Horszowski’s attacking the galloping figures with the audacity of one two generations younger than he. At the last chord, the audience whoops its appreciation for the gallant efforts.
The Liszt transcription of the Bach A Minor Prelude and Fugue, whatever its technical faults, lacks nothing for sweep and grand gesture, and the phraseology resonates with style. Polyphonic stretti fly across the keyboard with power to spare, a real tour de force by any standard. The B-flat Minor Mazurka evokes a restricted salon that only the elite inhabit. Rhythmically ambiguous, the metrics slide in and out between three and four. The middle section, though played with restraint, exhibits the native zal that defines the true Chopin acolyte. The C Major waxes militant from the opening beats; Horszowski’s landings are tiny miracles of national color and florid gardens.
The Mozart F Major Sonata has had a previous CD life on the Italian-based Memories label. A natural Mozart player who programmed the full cycle of sonatas in 1960, Horszowski applies the “mot juste”–to mix metaphors for a moment–to tonal weight and pedaled coloration. The beauty of the music emerges from its largesse of spirit rather than from the sheer sea of correctly articulated notes. The affects do manage to chase one another with vigor and lilted resonance. A tenderly direct expressiveness drives the Adagio, the Alberti bass figure and Lydian harmonies intimately rapt. Pungent accents mark the final Allegro assai, composed as it is in a modified stile brise, a pattern of broken notes and interrupted runs, many of which allow Horszowski his pearly play.
Horszowski, like Artur Rubinstein, championed the Brazilian Villa-Lobos (and Szymanowski) in his programs. The Tide Flowed reveals a colorfully modal rhythmic variety with obligations to Debussy, though the motor impulse is all Brazilian dance. Fly Away, Fly Away Hawk consists of perpetual runs and keyboard aerobics not far from Debussy’s Estampes. A hard patina does not dissuade us that this piece has a soft heart.
Finally, the motivic buzz that characterizes Mendelssohn’s C Major song without words as both a spinning song and “the bee’s wedding.” Ingenuous first to last, the quicksilver figures are all youth, Horszowski’s decades of experience notwithstanding.
— Gary Lemco
