Album review: Vladimir Horowitz

VLADIMIR HOROWITZ

Horowitz In Hamburg: The Last Concert

*****

DG 477 7558, £11.99

How much is a concert worth? Even at £140 a pop – and this was 1987 – Vladimir Horowitz's performance at the Hamburg Musikhalle on a Sunday afternoon in June was a sell-out. Two thousand people watched in awe as, 61 years after he first entered a studio, the Russian-born maestro performed what would be his last recorded piano concert.

Horowitz's power might have diminished and the pianistic thundering doesn't come until the second half, but his feeling for his music was never greater. In this pin-sharp radio recording, Mozart, Schumann, Schubert and Chopin sound unbelievably fresh and full of emotion and vitality.

Download this: Chopin: Mazurka in B minor