Bach Sonatas
The great piano virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz was, of course, known for playing the war horses of the repertoire. His idiosyncratic performances and recordings of Schumann, Liszt and Chopin are a practical benchmark against which all other pianists will always be measured.
This is partly due to his stature as a musician, but also his place in history. He was a contemporary and friend of the great composers Scriabin and Rachmaninoff. Horowitz was one of the last remaining pianists who played in the nineteenth century "grand manner."
As such, his recordings are the last remaining view of a European musical culture largely destroyed or ignored by the modern world.
But Horowitz was a very curious musician, and he had a habit of trying to find lesser known masterpieces that had been perhaps overlooked by lesser artists. Thus he championed Domenico Scarlatti, a peculiar but haunting composer born the same year as Bach, 1685.
Scarlatti had a fascinating life as the court harpsichordist and composer to the Infanta. As the highest ranking Royal musician in the Spanish court, he was often asked to compose a new piece each day, for the Infanta was an amateur harpsichordist and eagerly awaited the new composition.
The result was hundreds of miniature keyboard masterpieces, each one a finely polished jewel. In the improvisational spirit of the day, Scarlatti often made up the transitions and endings on the spot.
In fact, Scarlatti never wrote down any of these great pieces until he was in his late fifties. At that point, Scarlatti realized that he must preserve what he had done, and so embarked on a long period in which he wrote all his music into a notebook.
Horowitz may have heard the pieces played, or may have simply stumbled across them during his years of study.
Although Scarlatti's pieces were originally written for the harpsichord, Horowitz was the first pianist to bravely play them on the concert grand piano.
Purists, such as the famed harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, were horrified at Horowitz daring to "modernize" the pieces. Horowitz didn't change the notes that Scarlatti wrote, but subtly played them in a manner that seemed to be meant for the piano.
The Scarlatti Sonatas became a sensation in his concerts, and he often used one as an encore, as well as basing major portions of his recitals upon groups of them.
Scarlatti, in Horowitz's masterly hands, became witty and dry. The master pianist seemed to be literally creating his own meaning out of the old works, without destroying their original content and context.
Far from his thundering sound on Rachmaninoff, here Horowitz shows infinite taste and delicacy.
It is the equivalent of musical champagne.
John Aschenbrenner is an Emmy Award Winning Composer and a leading children's music educator, book publisher, and the author of numerous fun piano method books in the series PIANO BY NUMBER for kids. You can see the PIANO BY NUMBER series at http://www.pianoiseasy.com and http://www.pianoiseasy2.com
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Bach - Sonatas Partitas violin - Sonata 3 in C major 1/5
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