Vladimir Horowitz - An Historic Return Horowitz At Carnegie Hall (A Recording Of His First Concert In Twelve Years) flac album

The first two volumes chronicle Horowitz's return to the studios after signing an exclusive recording contract with Columbia Masterworks. Each volume contains a blurb by Wanda Toscanini Horowitz, a perceptive essay by Byron Janis, and illustrations - some of which I'd never seen before. The liner notes from the original recordings are also included, but are unfortunately truncated.

Front cover:

After an absence of twelve years, Vladimir Horowitz’s return to the concert stage was one of New York’s most exciting musical events. The early years of the retirement were unpleasant, but Horowitz’s condition gradually improved, and he formulated plans to return in 1957. Everything changed when his daughter, Sonia, apparently attempted suicide that June. Horowitz had the best of all worlds: the focus of a recording session without the pressure to deliver a final product, the informal ambiance of playing at home for friends, plus an ideal concert venue without the onus of a paying public and critics. Pianist Jed Distler.

Starting in 1945, Horowitz engaged the Carnegie Hall Recording Company to record all his solo recitals at that venue. He discontinued this practice after 1950, when RCA began recording his concerts there. The DVD consists of the first ever release of the famous TV concert Horowitz on Television. The CBS Television Network originally aired this program on Sunday, September 22, 1968, allowing a worldwide audience to experience Horowitz’s artistry with their very own eyes for the first time in decades.

This recording is the first of a collection of recordings made for Vladimir Horowitz's private use of concerts given in New York's Carnegie Hall. The recordings were captured on 78rpm acetate discs and survive in various states of disrepair in a collection held at Yale University. Vladimir Horowitz piano. XR remastering by Andrew Rose. Cover artwork based on a photograph of Vladimir Horowitz. The piano recital given by Vladimir Horowitz last night in Carnegie Hall, attended by as many as the law would allow in the place, was testimony equally to his distinguished art and to the high intelligence of his public. The program provided nothing of a spectacular character.

Columbia rushed to get out the recording of the concert. Horowitz kept insisting that this concert was a historic document, and that he wouldn’t change a note. But he did. Some of the slips in the Bach-Busoni are on the record, but not the terrifying moment in the Schumann Fantasy. Columbia sent a test pressing to the senior music critic of the Times, who noticed that the Schumann had been cleaned up. He called Columbia and asked what had happened. An hour later his phone rang: Mr. Schonberg? Yes. This is Vladimir Horowitz.