Concert of the Century

Various Artists

album cover

Lots of Big Names Making (Surprise!) Big Music

Hype being what it is, there's reason to mistrust anything that calls itself the "Concert of the Century." Much like "one-night-only summit meetings" in jazz, galas of concert performers are usually staid occasions designed to generate piles of cash, with considerations of art secondary to those of scheduling and star power. This affair, organized by the violinist Isaac Stern to benefit Carnegie Hall, is different. It showcases the pianist Vladimir Horowitz playing chamber music with Stern and cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, and accompanying the German art-song titan Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Horowitz didn't usually appear as an accompanist; this version of Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe, one of the greatest German song cycles, is his only recording with a vocalist. It's spectacular. Like many singers, Fischer-Dieskau had a set approach to a piece, particularly one like the Dichterliebe, which follows a poet's progress through spiraling waves of heartbreak. Horowitz pays attention to the text, yet manages to nudge the vocalist away from easy and obvious renditions. The piece is a series of song fragments somewhat akin to the rock-era "concept album," with bits of song held together by a governing narrative theme. Horowitz plays as though he's interested in magnifying the ambiguities of Schumann's lines, and often his left hand floats between pulses rather than committing to a particular tempo. This atmosphere of fluidity and conditional give-and-take lures Fischer-Dieskau into one of the most electrifying, tension-filled performances of his forty-year career.

Horowitz shines on the Tchaikovsky Piano Trio as well, despite the fact that his initial entrance has all the subtlety of a 3 A.M. wakeup call. Once he calibrates his attack for the setting, Horowitz snaps off wondrously alert chords that serve as a kind of backbone, conveying organizing authority without big dictatorial gestures. Other highlights include Leonardg Bernstein conducting Beethoven's "Leonore" overture and Bach's D Minor Concerto for Two Violins with Stern and Yehudi Menuhin.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1976, Columbia (Reissued 1991, Sony)
Key Tracks: Schumann: Dichterliebe. Tchaikovsky: Piano Trio.
Next Stop: Robert Schumann: Kreisleriana, Vladimir Horowitz.
Book Page: 808

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