Vladimir Horowitz

Born in Ukraine on October 1, 1903, Vladimir Horowitz stands among history’s most acclaimed pianists. Although his mother Sophie introduced him to the piano at age five, he devoted his early efforts to composition rather than performance. Studies at the Kiev Conservatory began in 1912 under Sergei Tarnovsky and Felix Blumenfeld, and he performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at his graduation in 1919. Solo recitals commenced in 1920, and within two years he was appearing regularly across Russia. During the 1924-1925 season alone he presented roughly seventy concerts, twenty-three of them in Leningrad, each drawing full houses. He departed Russia in autumn 1925 for performances in Berlin and Hamburg; while in Paris, concert manager Arthur Judson offered him an American tour. Acceptance of the proposal enabled him to leave the revolution behind, yet it also meant he would never see his family again.

His American debut took place in 1928 at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic under Sir Thomas Beecham. Later that year he played Piano Concerto No. 3 again, this time for Rachmaninov himself, and the two pianists formed a lasting friendship; Horowitz went on to record the work three times, beginning in 1930. In 1932 he collaborated for the first time with conductor Arturo Toscanini and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall. Their partnership proved enduring and included many future performances together; in December 1933 Horowitz married Toscanini’s daughter Wanda. After settling in New York in 1940 he obtained American citizenship and, during World War II, presented benefit concerts that raised millions of dollars in war bonds. He also introduced Prokofiev’s Sonatas Nos. 6, 7, and 8 to American audiences and actively championed the music of Samuel Barber and Dmitri Kabalevsky.

Horowitz declared his retirement from live performance in 1953 but maintained his recording career, entering an exclusive agreement with CBS Masterworks in 1962. He returned to the concert stage in 1965 with his “Historic Return.” A one-hour CBS telecast followed in 1968. Marking the fiftieth anniversary of his American debut, he performed a concerto for the first time in twenty-five years, again choosing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3, now with the New York Philharmonic under Eugene Ormandy. At Prince Charles’s invitation he gave his first London recital in more than three decades in 1982, and in 1986 he revisited Russia after sixty years away, appearing in both Moscow and Leningrad. Winner of fifteen Grammy awards, Horowitz died of a heart attack on November 5, 1989, and was laid to rest in the Toscanini family tomb at the Cimitario Monumentale in Milan, Italy.