Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I recently read Evenings With Horowitz: A Personal Portrait, by David Dubal. This book recounts the relationship that classical musician and author Dubal formed with the great pianist Vladimir Horowitz, during the Maestro's last years of life when he was called "The Last Romantic" and his every public performance took on the feel of a visitation by the Pontiff. It's a very readable book, notable for its biographical portrait of Horowitz and the first-hand look we get at both the way Horowitz loomed over the classical music community and the way he was, in many ways, a mercurial and selfish man. Horowitz, like all great artists, is a very demanding soul: demanding of his art, demanding of the people in his life, demanding of himself. It has been well documented how Horowitz had to leave his native Russia after the Bolshevik revolution, never to return until 1986 when he was in his 80s; Dubal's book recounts a lot of that, as well, but it also gives us the sense that Horowitz never formed a true sense of belonging in the American society that he eventually took as his home.

The book is episodic in structure, and at times it feels like a series of vignettes about the Maestro, some of which are frankly more interesting than others. It also ends on something of a sad note, not only with Horowitz's death but with the fact that he and Dubal had a falling-out just months before his passing. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating account of a great musician and his relationship with a lesser musician who was no less passionate for music.

As a companion experience to reading this book, the other day I listened to my copy of Horowitz in Moscow, the recording of the monumental concert Horowitz gave when he finally returned to Moscow in 1986. The recording is magical and amazing. Even if Horowitz's Mozart Sonata (C Major, K. 330) is a bit uneven in the opening movement, the Romantic works on the disc -- Romantic music forming the spine of Horowitz's repertoire -- are staggering, particularly the Scriabin Etudes, which are played in a white heat that can still be felt listening to the CD in my living room instead of in the concert hall in 1986. Horowitz in Moscow is a great recording of one of classical music's premier events.