The Hammock Papers: Horowitz

Showing posts with label Horowitz. Show all posts

22 October 2026

Happy Birthday, Franz Liszt

For a whole fortnight my mind and my fingers have been working around me like two lost souls. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Byron, Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them, meditate on them, devour them with fury; besides this, I practice four to five hours a day of exercises (thirds, sixths, octaves, tremolos, repetition of notes, cadenzas, etc.). Ah! provided I don't go mad, you will find me an artist!

Franz Liszt, born on this day in 1811

Vladimir Horowitz plays Liszt's Consolation No. 3 ...

08 June 2026

Happy Birthday, Robert Schumann

Völlner, Robert Schumann, 1850

To poetry belongs the golden, decisive word. Other arts have accepted nature herself as arbiter, from whom they have borrowed their forms. Music is the orphan whose father and mother no one can determine, and it may well be that precisely in this mystery lies the source of its beauty.

Robert Schumann, born on this day in 1810

Vladimir Horowitz performs Träumerei from Kinderszenen, Op. 15 ...

01 October 2025

Happy Birthday, Vladimir Horowitz

I am a 19th-century Romantic. I am the last. I take terrible risks. Because my playing is very clear, when I make a mistake, you hear it. But the score is not a bible, and I am never afraid to dare. The music is behind those dots. You search for it, and that is what I mean by the grand manner. I play, so to speak, from the other side of the score, looking back.

Vladimir Horowitz born on this day in 1903

Schumann's "Träumerei"...

10 August 2025

Liszt, Consolation No. 3 in D-Flat Major

Vladimir Horowitz ...

22 October 2024

Happy Birthday, Liszt

Broad paths are open to every endeavor, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness. In life one must decide whether to conjugate the verb to have or the verb to be.

Franz Liszt, born on this day in 1811.

Vladimir Horowitz performs Lizst's Consolation in D-Flat, No.3 ...

01 October 2024

Happy Birthday, Horowitz

On this day in 1903, pianist Vladimir Horowitz was born.

Here he his in a performance of Robert Schumann's "Träumerei" ...

08 June 2023

Happy Birthday, Schumann

Unknown, Robert Schumann, 1839

Robert Schumann was born on this day in 1810.

Vladimir Horowitz performs the Arabesque in C-major, Op.18 ...

01 March 2023

Happy Birthday, Chopin

Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.

Frédéric Chopin, born on this day in 1810.

Vladimir Horowitz plays the Ballade No.1, Op.23 in G minor ...

31 January 2023

Happy Birthday, Schubert

Melegh, Portrait of a Man (Schubert), 1827

Franz Schubert was born on this day in 1997.

Vladimir Horowitz performs Schubert's Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat major, D. 899 ...

22 October 2022

Happy Birthday, Liszt

Franz Liszt was born on this day in 1811.

Vladimir Horowitz performs the Consolation No. 3 in D-flat Major ...

13 July 2021

Chopin, Ballade no.1 op.23 in G minor

Vladimir Horowitz performs ...

22 October 2020

Happy Birthday, Liszt

Franz Liszt was born on this day in 1811.

Broad paths are open to every endeavour, and a sympathetic recognition is assured to every one who consecrates his art to the divine services of a conviction of a consciousness.

Franz Liszt

Vladimir Horowitz performs Liszt's Consolation No. 3, Lento placido, S. 172

01 October 2020

Happy Birthday, Horowitz

Vladimir Horowitz was born on this day in 1903.

His concert recorded in Moscow from 1986 ...

Vienna in 1987 ...

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

Theodore Roosevelt

24 June 2020

Schubert, Impromptu in B-flat Major, Op.142, No. 3, D.935

Vladimir Horowitz performs ...

01 March 2020

Happy Birthday, Chopin

Frédéric Chopin was born on this date in 1810.

Vladimir Horowitz performs the Introduction and Rondo in E-flat major, Op. 16 ...

29 December 2019

Majestically.

Vladimir Horowitz performs majestically ...

22 October 2019

Happy Birthday, Liszt

Franz Liszt was born on this date in 1811.

Vladimir Horowitz performs the Consolation No.3, Lento placido, S.172 ...

01 October 2019

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Horowitz

Vladimir Horowitz was born on this date in 1903.

I must tell you I take terrible risks. Because my playing is very clear, when I make a mistake you hear it. If you want me to play only the notes without any specific dynamics, I will never make one mistake. Never be afraid to dare. Perfection itself is imperfection.

Vladimir Horowitz

Horowitz performs Schumann's "Träumerei" from the Kinderszenen, Op. 15 ...

04 July 2019

Liszt, Années de pèlerinage I, S.160

Vladimir Horowitz performs au bord d'une source ...

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."