CD, стоящие на полке рядом : Classics (Guru)      

Original - RCA, 1992

## 1-13 - Schumann - recorded May 10 & 17, 1950

## 14-15 - Liszt - recorded

## 16 - Debussy - recorded

## 17 - Faure - recorded

## 18 - Mendelssohn - recorded

## 19-23 - Schumann - recorded

## 24 - Brahms - recorded

## 26 - Liszt (Busoni) - recorded

## 25,27-30 - Chopin - recorded

========= from the cover ==========

Horowitz-Pianistic Bel Canto

The works collected here fall under that highly stylized label of "Romantic" piano music. It is a tag musicologists have rather loosely tied onto music written since the early years of the 19th century that departs from the discipline of strict classic form. This implies a rather dusty pigeonhole for a treasury of eternally fresh music, but the musicologists temper their severity and admit other freedoms from classical antecedents-sound, harmony, lyrical accompaniment, new vital forms. The orchestral tone poem emerged, and the piano, finally developed to have a vast array of sonic colors, was emancipated from its role as a percussive instrument. Schumann, Chopin and Liszt pushed the piano into the limelight of vocal expression, and Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms found it a tireless voice for their lyric genius. All great pianists, they composed and "sang" their wide gamut of emotions on the piano.

What formidable technical problems this implies! The piano, basically a series of tuned drums, requires the performer to use his fingers to strike keys that have a monstrous mechanical connection to hammers that beat strings-the farthest cry from human vocal production. And yet, this planet has witnessed some pianistic phemomena-men and women who have made that mechanized monster produce sounds that could issue from the human throat. They speak in vocal terms: a "breath" here, a "full-throated" sound there, a tempo determined and a phrase measured by the duration of a breath, and on and on.

These unique artists quite prominently include Vladimir Horowitz. His pianism is a vast continent in the world of music, and through his broad palette of tonal shadings he elevates pianistic vocalism to the level of bel canto.

The works heard here are songs and dances-if not always in name, most certainly in mood. And that mood is true lyric Romanticism. Whatever else pianists endeavor to project, to "sing" has been and hopefully will always be a fundamental goal. How fortunate we are that they convey the life flow of the human voice raised in sharing a human emotion. This is certainly Romantic music-perhaps the best of music.

-John Pfeiffer (All Music Guide)