Horszowski's 1940 Vatican Radio recordings

[Rach3]

Recordings made in 1940 for Vatican Radio , extraordinary playing, the pianist at age 48:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31ygOhhZg98 Chopin Scherzo No.1,Op.20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSk9BQzQwjg Liszt,Legend No.2, “St.Paul Walking on the Waves “

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL8U646ygws Chopin,Berceuse,Op.57

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsw9-qjdo6I Liszt, Legend No.1,”St.Francis Preaching to the Birds”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MJ1uDlC6Lg Chopin,Ballade No.1,Op.23

The set also contains a 1952 live New York recital, wonderful performance of the Beethoven “Waldstein” not at YT, and others.


Liner notes by the late, greatly missed, Allan Evans:

“In late 1992 I came upon an interview given by Horszowski that mentioned a 1940 stopover in Rome before he was to move on to South America, and his having had the honor of playing for Pope Pius XII. He also told of recording for Vatican Radio. Mrs. Horszowski located a diary that listed all the works played – over an hour of piano solos.
Only now are radio station archives beginning to salvage what the BBC, ABC, NZBC and most American networks routinely discarded to create shelf space, even providing their discs for landfills. After World War II an engineer at Radio France evaluated their archives according to their as sound quality. One item, Belá Bartók’s final Paris solo recital, was trashed. Years earlier when Bartók discovered that record companies not only discontinued to keep in print many invaluable releases but also destroyed their metal master discs, especially from their world music catalogs, he demanded that an international commission be established to safeguard the sur- vival of music that was already endangered. If Radio Vaticana also adhered to the Library’s reasoned principles, would they have preserved their radio discs?
In August 1993, five inquiries led to an archivist who had just returned from his holiday. “Yes, we have it!” he shouted. “The original recording is on a magnetic tape.” Perhaps the only good that emerged from Nazi Germany was the reel-to-reel tape recorder, of which one exemplar ended up in the radio station of a secured micro-state inside Mussolini’s capital. Horszowski’s art was captured with this tech- nology, making him the first pianist ever to have been recorded on tape. “We found it a year ago.” the archivist explained. A pile of tapes had been brought up from a forgotten storage area, one unknown even to the staff, and were to be thrown out. “That same day. a musician visiting the studio noticed HORSZOWSKI written on a spine. ‘Don’t throw this out!’ ” The archivist and staff threaded the fragile tape to create a digital copy, and just in time as the tape barely survived its single playback.
I alerted Mrs. Horszowski to the discovery, and soon she received a copy from the Vatican: “The more I hear it, the more I am amazed by it!” she said. “It has some of his best playing.” His perfomances come from the last moments of Horszowski’s pre-War career as a virtuoso who had already toured throughout Europe for over forty years.”

https://arbiterrecords.org/catalog/miec ... 1952-1975/

[maestrob]

This is a marvelous, even miraculous discovery!

Many thanks for posting about this, Rach3!

A copy is now winging its way home to my library.

[Lance]

While I never got the Arbiter set [165] even though I have many on that label, the Vatican recordings were also issued by Pearl [9108] which also contains some other material from Horszowski's live recitals. I got the Pearl CD from a friend in 1997 and paid a precious $35 for it and wanted it! Can you imagine being that impulsive? On the other hand, I recognized great music making when I heard it. Just checked the inflation table. That $35 from 1997 would be equal to almost $58 in buying power today at least in one table, much higher in other tables. So I still consider it a bargain! However, on the collector's market I'm sure that Pearl disc would have a much higher seller price today, too. I was never overly enamoured with Pearl's restorations but it was better than nothing.

[barney]

Thanks for these, Steve. I hope to listen to them today.