Throughout his career Vladimir Horowitz had an on-again-off-again affair with Beethoven’s music. Although he played all 32 sonatas privately, the pianist chose his public Beethoven carefully. He recorded three of the “name” sonatas several times, and his 1972 “Moonlight”, “Waldstein”, and “Appassionata”, reissued here, guarantee stimulating listening even when they don’t fully convince.
An air of contrivance informs Horowitz’s tapered phrasing and pellucid voicings in the Moonlight’s first two movements. Although the finale is full of contorted lines and unsettled rhythms, Horowitz’s jolting accents and huge dynamic range convey a more authentic, elemental sound world. There’s plenty of high voltage bravura in the Waldstein too, along with more scrupulous attention to Beethoven’s dynamic shifts and stresses than in the pianist’s 1956 RCA recording. At times Horowitz’s technical honesty seems scrupulous to a fault: for instance, he largely avoids the Finale’s controversial long pedal markings and treats the coda’s octaves as short, brilliant staccato bursts rather than glissandos.
The Appassionata receives a far more assertive and fluid treatment compared to Horowitz’s relatively cautious RCA version. His inner drive and nervous energy are akin to Rudolf Serkin’s response to the music’s improvisatory impulses, in addition to his gaunt sonority and huge dynamic range. No significant timbral differences distinguish the present transfers from those in Sony’s 1993 complete Horowitz Masterworks Recordings edition, although they’re reproduced here at a louder decibel level. [11/5/2003]
