Music
Diabolerie
Rodney Manes
old virtuoso's first European concert for over 30 years, in which he gave his services to one of the Prince of Wales's favourite charities, the Royal Opera House Develop- ment Appeal (though he prudently retain- ed, I understand, the world-wide television fees). Three television cameras and their operators, one on the stage half-hidden behind a discreet plywood cloud, another Muttering and fidgeting with his script when the encores started. Prince Charles in the royal box, saluted by Horowitz's wildly idiosyncratic version of the national an- them. Television lights, the heat from which brought even strong men near to fainting, though no one dared complain Since the recitalist himself proved cheerfully Impervious. Best of all, a moment to which only H. M. Batemen could have done justice: the man who unwrapped a sweet during a Horowitz recital — shock- Horowitz indeed. Horowitz has long been surrounded by an aura of diabolerie, the man who attempts the impossible and succeeds, and hehasdoubtless fostered it. Yet the vilishness is of the Puck rather than the p agarlini variety. He declined to start his se- cond encore because he noticed the camera Was not on him; fair enough, but the double-take at the same camera before he started the third encore, with something ap- proaching a conspiratorial shrug-and-wink "` the audience, was a piece of perfectly t211112 ed comic business quite as virtuosic as Ms playing. Indeed, his platform manner is one of the deprecating remarkable things about him. The "ePrecating little smile, the all-enveloping waves (due attention to the gallery), the Miming of exhaustion Chow can you ask an old man for more?'), all calculated to reduce audiences to total adoration and all ini stark contrast either to Serkin, who scut- tles off stage like a crab threatened by a depth charge, or to Michelangeli, who greets standing ovations with a glare of un- disguised contempt and makes it plain that It there is one thing in the world he hates More than giving recitals, then it is the fools Who Pay to hear them. Horowitz, a real old Pro, loves playing the piano, loves playing to people, to princes, public, even press. At least, that's the impression he gives, and 'ere are worse ways of approaching the whole business.
But this recital was much more than a cir- cus or an adroitly staged love-in. Horowitz is the last of a line of virtuoso performers stretching back for a century and a half, vir- tuosos to whom attempting the impossible and the love-in atmosphere were important. There will be no more in an age afflicted with ghastly good taste: once the chain is broken, that's it. So there was an element of time-machine here. Horowitz played piano-duets for fun with his friend Rachmaninov and argued about the revi- sions to his second piano sonata. In his playing of his own version, the fact that the writing itself seemed light on musical specific gravity to tasteful ears mattered lit- tle in the face of right-hand arpeggios that were plainly impossible, of the astonishing sonorities conjured with the left hand, of the filigree delicacy of the scale passages. Humour was added to the diabolerie, with little Chico Marx forefinger stabs at isolated notes, an effect repeated in the Rachmaninov Polka that came as an en- core, in which he also seemed to be inviting laughs by playing with fingers flat and flap- ping, wrists below the keyboards, little finger crooked like a Surbiton hostess's round her tea-cup — all the things our piano teachers spent years drumming out of us.
The G-minor Chopin Ballade, rhapsodi- cally delivered and with some frightfully cunning cover-ups, told us little about Chopin, lots about time-machine virtuosos. The unexpected items told us much more. Was he right — perhaps he was — to make Scarlatti sound like Debussy? Purists may have been reaching for their smelling salts, but music-lovers were drop-jawed at the eloquence of the phrasing, the positively vocal legato, the unbelievable range of tone-colour drawn from the instrument. Harpsichordists have machinery to achieve this; Horowitz just has fingers.
In the Schumann Kinderszenen the rubato may have sounded too wayward to some (Traumerei strangely lumpy) but again the singing legato line in Der Dichter spricht took one's breath away, that and his unaffected, purely poetic playing of unassuming music of unplummable depth. That moment and the first encore, Chopin's A-flat waltz Op. 69, the second phrase of which was one of the most musical things I have ever heard and alone worth the price of a ticket, transcended the circus. Diabolerie, yes, lots of laughs, lots of love, all ephemeral maybe but none of
them succeeding in disguising (as Horowitz jolly well knows) what the occasion was really about — music. It was a privilege to be there.
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