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This double album presents, for the first time on recording, a Chicago concert and broadcast recorded in 1986, when Horowitz was 83. The music that exists from the last few years of Horowitz's life has a marvelous rarefied quality, and this live recording -- marred by heavy early-season coughing about which Horowitz complains in one of the two included radio interviews, but enhanced by the immediacy of the live situation -- is no exception. Horowitz was never the most purely muscular pianist out there (although he could make octaves ring when he had to) , and not the most intellectual. But he was perhaps the most perfectionistic of the great pianists, taking stretches of several years off to rebuild his technique and his musical understanding when he felt his playing was not up to snuff. During his last years he turned his attention to composers like Mozart and Domenico Scarlatti, who take up most of the first CD in the physical two-CD set. The results are magnificent: sparkling miniatures with hypnotic, almost glassy slow movements. Horowitz's Scriabin is deeply mysterious, hinting at otherworldly realms, and his Schumann and Chopin have a wonderful nostalgic feel. The vaults of unreleased Horowitz are being curated by a group led by pianist Byron Janis, and they have done well to bring this concert to the world; one anxiously awaits more. Show More



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