God of music Vladimir Horowitz destroys the world with his orchestral, cataclysmic sound.

Gilels il suono più grande

Yes, I’ve heard that kind of sound a million times.

No pianist had the vast range of tonal colors of Horowitz, allowing him to bring out inner voices and contrapuntal melodies with remarkable clarity. His use of rubato was superb, and his clarity and technique were without compare. Fanboys can throw out the names of many fine pianists, but Vladimir Horowitz was the greatest.

I would like to add to the description of the video: “…or with as many wrong / extra notes.” 😂

not God at all...but certainl y the ONE TRUE GOD gave him the pianistic gift.

Horowitz the human jukebox,got a quarter?

God of Piano.
Not Music please

Love the thumbnail

When asked why he plays his octaves so fast he said “because he could”, a one of a kind showman

I think he was,better than Yuja Wan here?

The devil's pianist. Paganini be like :)

Howw??????.

The man was a genius! No two ways about it!!

What an idiot.

music-circus j agree no classical music difference between demonstrative pianist and the real composer's mucic

Man of steel fingers!

Wow!!!!!!!!😮😮😮😮😮

So many wrong notes

😮😮😮😮 Amazing!!!!
Which piece is it?

Why in the world someone thinks it’s a good idea to say that Horowitz “DESTROYS THE WORLD” when playing piano?
Limited vocabulary? A helpless hope of being more relevant? Biased thinking?

Some smashing going on there..

What is the name of this piece

Impressive. His hands were actually moving too fast to be filmed at one point. Pretty good reflexes for an old guy.

@gerry30...one other thing you mentioned, your hearing him, Horowitz during the 80ties. You need to go back, my friend. When we were hearing this guy during the late fifties via recordings prior to his first Sabatical. And subsequent return in Nineteen sixty five. The Album: Homage to Liszt, the " Funerail" and 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody. Saints Saens, " Danse Macabre", a really early recording say, from the late thirties or early nineties. The Tschaikowsky concero, B flat minor with Toscanini conducting. Find everything you can lay hands on of his playing prior to the fifties and late forties. This is the Horowitz we know of. And there is ( was ) nothing he could'nt do that Arrau, Serkin ( who by the way played very little romatic stuff ). Just Beethoven and Schubert. Truth be told, there was a lot he did that most of them would not have even dared to try. Because of their Limitations. Horowitz had No Limitations at the piano. None. Listen to Solomon and Arturo Benedetti Michaelangeli. Rubinstein who after meeting up with Horowitz and hearing him said. " I must start practising ". Earlier Horowitz, dude. In the eighties, he was getting very old. And died in 1989. Your local libraries can get these works via inter library loans, should they not have them amoungst their own collections.

@gerry30: Only a portion of your analysis of Mr. Horowitz here, is true. Teresa Carreno was born in 1853. And only from eye witnesses could she have been the monumental pianist described by so many. Levine and Hoffman were born in 1874 and ' 76. Thus, Horowitz could not possibly have heard any performances by either of these Giants. Rachmaninoff was a Super Virtuoso. But after hearing Horowitz's performance of his own concerto no.3 in d minor. He gave the piece to Vladimir. As for Arrau's assessment of Ms. Careno. I read about her power and probably manly strength in Harold Schoenberg's book, " The Great Pianist ". And it is possible that Claudio Arrau was like so many pianist, jealous of Horowitz. Of whom with all of their attributes just couldn't match what Horowitz brought to the table. That being aside from that tremendous sound he produced from the instrument without banging: His unique phrasing and touch. Horowitz threw out the Curved finger approach to playing the piano, with his literall Flat fingers over the keys. Employing the weight of the whole hand. As for his being reticent of the great German works, Beethoven being an example. We had the critics of music to thank for that. Some attempting to shame him from the transcriptions he enjoyed playing so much. No one else was trying them. As for Earl Wild. Technically to some extent, Horowitz's equal. But not in the production of that massive sound Horowitz drew out of the piano. No one else did in fact. Georgy Cziffra and Simon Barere were probably stronger than Horowitz. Certainly Cziffra after spending all of those years laboring in Russia's Gulags. But his natural genius at the instrument can't be denied. Still, he was never accepted as Horowitz's better. He never had the musical mind. Marc Andre Hamlin' s technical geniuse is just that. He falls into the same catagory of Mr. Cziffra. That quip about Horowitz's octave playing? Just plain silly. And a bold faced lie. Horowitz was reputed to be the best by all critics, professional and Lay people. Simply because of what he Said to his listeners over the entire lifetime of his performances. No one did it better. This is why no greater a keyboard player than Glenn Gould was so jealous of him. With all ofhis brilliance at J. S. Bach. He knew he couldn't out play Horowitz. And no one would have wanted to bear him even attempt to try. One of my own teachers did say, that all or most of the great pianist back in the early nineteenth century played like Hirowitz. Hoffman included, of course. But none were ascribed the label of Out Lisztian Liszt. And that's saying something.

I've never bothered to listen to Horowitz. Was it his repertoire, or the fact that he has been so favoured by the music establishment?
Brendel, Richter, Berman, Gieseking, Lupu, Cortot, Jacobs ..... these are the pianists I have found most satisfying.

Was almost expecting an explosion meme at the end.

'God of music'? A piano player? not Bach or Mozart who wrote hundreds of hours of the greatest music in history?

i like how he barely moves his body. just, makes it look routine for him..

God of music? God of charlatanism, more likely.

The title, LOL!

There are only few chosen ones, Horowitz is one of them.

he's an incapable musician

NY Steinway and Hardner Chemical effect ! and his Original signature version. No one seet .....!

You do know that Horowitz had his piano voiced very brilliantly, don't you? He would ask his tuner to shave felt off the hammers to produce that bright, glassy sound. Once he asked for too much of that and his tuner refused. Yes, he had a big sound, but a lot of that had to do with his piano. Also, the NY Steinway already has a more brilliant sound than the Hamburg. Give him a regularly voiced Hamburg and see if he could produce that sound. Nope.

Epic!

....what the.....

NY steinway. Impossible this perform Hamburg Steinway.

Wow!Winderbar gespielt!! 😊

I think the piano should extend more keys to accomodate Horowitz.

One of the few pianists show limited body movement and yet producing such a sublime sound. I remember a remarkable quote of Vladimir Horowitz as ''I don't need to show off my emotions through my body, they are inside my soul'' something like that...

that piano just aged a year

Poor piano

slay

this has the best thumbnail image I've ever seen.

I went through a Horowitz-phase back in the 80s when he was all the buzz because of his return to health and the Moscow concert. Some really wonderful moments of music he created. I will always admire his playing, but experience has made me appreciate him without fawning. There are simply too many great pianists that could do things Horowitz could not or didn't try. Once I heard Josef Lhevinne and Rachmaninoff and Hoffman I realized there was a whole generation of people before him that appreciated what he brought to the table without being intimidated. And Horowitz himself expressed sorrow that he wasn't able to play the great German repertoire which he considered more serious than the Romantic repertoire he specialized in to the level of Serkin or Arrau. He was also frustrated that he couldn't technically match the power, drive, clarity and spontaneity of Hoffman (who can? the guy was inhuman) And there are criticisms from people that are worth noting. Arrau said that Horowitz created a lot of great excitement with his octaves but he could only do them for a short span. He contrasted that with Teresa Carreno who he said could create as big a sound and go all day. He said he thought the walls of the theater would cave in when she played. And he had his equals among his own super virtuoso generation. Earl Wild had better overall control of sound and Jorge Bolet could polish off a giant piece like the Wagner-Liszt Tannhauser Overture paraphrase in a way I doubt Horowitz would have been able to hold together. And then there's Cziffra. Among the younger men, Marc Andre Hamelin crossed timellines in his career with Horowitz and would have made a young Horowitz take him seriously. Horowitz was exceptional for what he did and he was unique but he did have limitations and he knew how to emphasize what he did the best most of the time.

Es Bahn, I thank you for posting this short snippet (and for all your other awesome videos). It's given rise to some really interesting comments. If you want to see my take on Horowitz, please see my two responses to Michael Davison, who sincerely asks what makes Horowitz so special. I tried my best to answer that excellent question.

Also, I love your name. Es Bahn. Welche denn? München - Freising? Stuttgart - Schorndorf? I am a Southerner, as you can tell.

The thumbnail tho

To think that Horowitz knew Rachmaninoff during his lifetime, and that my own piano tutor met and engaged with Horowitz in London during the 1980s. He played on Horowitz's Steinway at the Festival Hall. True piano royalty.

no, for pure piano histrionics, there are none like him