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Vladimir Horowitz - The Last Romantic |
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Description:
In this celebratory documentary, acclaimed sibling filmmakers Albert and David Maysles (Salesman, Grey Gardens) give us a fascinating chance to see legendary pianist Vladimir Horowitz from an intimate perspective. The movie was filmed during a 1985 recording session in the artist's New York studios, a venue that allows the camera marvelous access to examine closely the flurry of Horowitz's fingers across the keyboard and his wonderfully expressive face as it keeps time with the music, registering in turn intensity, rapture, childish delight. All the while Horowitz's wife, Wanda Toscanini, looks on lovingly. Between performances, the two rest on a couch and share reminiscences of Rachmaninoff, Scriabin (who wisely advised the 10-year-old virtuoso to educate himself in all cultural matters, not just music), and Maestro Arturo Toscanini himself. On one wall of the elegantly furnished apartment-style studio hangs a beautiful Japanese screen portraying a soldier and his horse leaping across a chasm, suspended in midair; Horowitz himself seems just as much to float, unbounded by the gravitational tug of age (he was 81 at the time). His playing is as strong as ever, whether deftly maneuvering the glassy trills of Mozart's Sonata in C, K. 330, or powering his way through an energetic reading of Chopin's Scherzo No. 1. All the music is wonderful, of course; no less so is the film's fond portrait of the man who made it. --Bruce Reid
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