IF THIS HALL COULD TALK

EPISODE: HOROWITZ's NAILS

Yulianna Avdeeva: My parents were huge music admirers. I got a present from a friend of my mother, who presented me three tapes with the recordings of Vladimir Horowitz. So that was, for me, definitely my first encounter with him as an artist. 

Jessica Vosk: Internationally acclaimed pianist Yulianna Avdeeva.

Yulianna Avdeeva: And I remember that very well, that these recordings after a couple of years, they didn't work anymore because I played them so often, and they were so wonderful for me, so inspiring. And from the very beginning, there was an artist who indeed, with his sound, with his way of performing, somehow it was going directly to my heart like a laser.

RECORDING OF SCARLATTI’S SONATA IN E MAJOR, K.380 - ANDANTE COMMODO PERFORMED BY VLADIMIR HOROWITZ.

Jessica Vosk: Welcome to If This Hall Could Talk, a podcast from Carnegie Hall. I am your host, Jessica Vosk and in this series we’ll look at the legendary and sometimes quirky history of the Hall. From momentous occasions to the eclectic array of world-renowned artists that have taken to the Hall’s stages, in each episode, we’ll explore unique items from our archives collection and travel back in time to relive incredible moments that have shaped the culture we live in today. In this episode, we talk about the indelible marks made into the stage by the inimitable and exacting pianist, Vladimir Horowitz.

Yulianna Avdeeva: Music is about, first of all, about emotions. Music is here, is there for us to express emotions, to share them with not with words, not with body, but with the music. And music is this international language, which helps us to communicate with so many people without really speaking their language. So it has to be extremely emotional. And I think that Horowitz had this ability, indeed, to put this maybe indeed extreme emotional message into his music, and this is what makes his interpretation. So you love him or you hate him. There is no middle way somehow. 

Jessica Vosk: Vladimir Horowitz is widely considered one of the greatest classical pianists of all time. Born in Kiev and having lived most of his adult life in NY, he was brilliant on stage, known for his passion and temper, his long bouts of depression, unforgettable comebacks, and marriage to the daughter of another great virtuoso, Arturo Toscanini.  There certainly were swirls of wild stories that surrounded his vibrant life. 

Gino Francesconi: And most of them are true. They take on an air of legend. 

Jessica Vosk: Gino Francesconi is the founder of the Rose Archives. 

Gino Francesconi: People add to them every time they're told. But with Horowitz, in almost—in most cases, there's a lot of truth to those stories. 

Jessica Vosk: Maybe the truest one of all is that he was deeply loved, and Carnegie Hall was a home away from home for him, so much so that he had screws, or as I like to call them, the Horowitz Nails, placed into the stage to mark the spot where his piano needed to be placed every time he came back for a concert. 

Gino Francesconi: When Horowitz came out of retirement, and did his concert in 1965, and then they realized that he would be coming back—he actually enjoyed coming out of retirement—and so he had this thing where he would have the stagehands move the piano around until he was happy with the sound. 

The stagehands back then noticed that he would ask them to move the piano around, and it always ended up on the same spot. So, to help them, they put three screws in the stage to mark where the legs of his piano would go. And he would come back, and he would do the same thing all over the—he would move the piano. And I'm not talking moving it all over the place; it was just a few inches here and there and up and down. And when all was said and done, they were always over the screws, which was always pretty amazing to me, you know.

And, so, in 1986, when they were replacing the stage floor, one of the stagehands, Jordan McDonald decided to cut them out of the stage floor, and he marked them, and gave them to me when we were just starting the archives in 1986.

RECORDING OF CHOPIN’S SCHERZO NO. 1 IN B MINOR, OP. 20 PERFORMED BY VLADIMIR HOROWITZ.

Kathleen Sabogal: It's a block of the stage. 

Jessica Vosk: Kathleen Sabogal, director of the archives at Carnegie Hall.

Kathleen Sabogal: And I know we often refer to them as nails but when you do look at it, you can see that it's actually a screw, and you can see where the floor is all worn down. So, it is kind of cool to be holding this piece of the stage.

Jessica Vosk: For Horowitz to have screws drilled into the stage makes sense. He may be one of the performers that has played most at Carnegie Hall. Archivist, Rob Hudson.

Rob Hudson: He had an amazingly long career at Carnegie Hall. I guess there are others that have had—their span of years maybe covered more, but Horowitz packed a lot in. I think he performed—I just had this up—92 times at Carnegie Hall between his debut in 1928 with the New York Philharmonic—he and Sir Thomas Beecham, the British conductor, both made their US debuts together on this concert.

RECORDING OF RACHMANINOFF’S PRELUDE IN G, OP.32, NO.5 PERFORMED BY VLADIMIR HOROWITZ.

Yulianna Avdeeva: I listened again to his recording of the Second Piano Sonata by Horowitz, and it was immediately how can I—how can I dare —how can I—how can I live without his sound, without his transparency, without his artistry? 

Jessica Vosk: People loved seeing Horowitz perform but what exactly made Horowitz so special?

Yulianna Avdeeva: I think, first of all, it is his sound. It's a very individual, very personal sound. It's easily possible to recognize him as, you know, the singers you can recognize on the—just on their voice, right. So you hear a recording, someone singing, you know this is Maria Callas, for instance. Same with a great pianist, and Horowitz definitely has a very individual sound, which is very—it's very warm but, at the same time, also very—has many different colors in it. Sometimes it's, I would say, it's a rather dark world [sp], and the phrasing, which he uses, is indeed very clear. It's like he would be singing or he would be talking, saying a sentence. 

Gary Graffman: He said, "You know, when you play, you have to breathe somewhere. If a singer sang that phrase, she would—he or she would have to breathe somewhere. 

Jessica Vosk: Pianist Gary Graffman was a student of Horowitz’s.

Gary Graffman: Maybe I won't agree with where it is but some…you can't [laughs] just go on like that. And most—all wind instruments, you have to breathe somewhere too. You have to make a decision. And even a stringed instrument, you have to decide when to change the bow, go from down to up or up to down, and so forth." 

Gino Francesconi: Horowitz liked a very bright sound, and he actually liked Carnegie Hall's house piano. Carnegie Hall comes with—when you rent the hall, you get a piano, and you can use that piano. And a lot of people actually loved that piano because so many pianists played it that it actually was kind of broken in, and people loved the touch. But Horowitz liked to have that some of the hammers shaved, and we wouldn't allow that, so he got his own piano, and took it with him everywhere he went.

RECORDING OF MOZART’S PIANO SONATA NO. 10 IN C MAJOR, K. 330 - II. ANDANTE CANTABILE PERFORMED BY VLADIMIR HOROWITZ.

David Dubal: Horowitz came from a great pianistic tradition of great technicians. 

Jessica Vosk: David Dubal is a pianist, broadcaster, artist and the author of The Art of the Piano, Evenings with Horowitz.  His relationship with Horowitz was profound and here he reflects on the first time he met him.

David Dubal: I can see it now so perfectly. I go into this, you know, it's a five-story townhouse, at 14 East 94th, and everyone, of course, everyone there knew that the great—the great Horowitz, the greatest pianist that lived in this century, for sure, in most people's minds, you know, lived there. And sometimes you could hear him practice. So I saw this luxurious place. Mrs. Horowitz had not come down. I was told exactly what—that I had to—I had to wear a tie because you never, never could be permitted into the Horowitz home without a tie. And so it's exactly what I did not do, because I never wore a tie then, and I only wore scarves. And so I put the scarf on, and I said, "If, you know, if the maestro, you know, throws me out, screw him." And so that was it. He comes down. And then what saved me, and it was, I'm sure of it, what saved me is that there was a marvelous little cat on the floor, you know, just rubbing up. 

And I was down—when the great man came down the stairs, oh, dressed impeccably, bow tie, of course, because that's what he did, and he saw me caressing the cat, and looked at me, and that was it. "Proceed then," he said, "proceed." So we sat down, and during that time, perhaps, this is a musical aside, I was—I was not that interested in Horowitz as a pianist. 

Jessica Vosk: David Dubal did a series of interviews with Horowitz and they were a great success.

David Dubal: I won the Peabody Award for it. And I asked Maestro to, you know, come and be there at the Pierre Hotel. And he said, "What time? What time is the ceremony?" I said, "Oh, it's at noon, Maestro." "No, I don't even get up till four." [laughs] So I said, "Okay, I guess I'll get the—I'll take the award myself." 

Jessica Vosk: To think of Horowitz as many said he was—tempestuous, moody, prone to anger, insecure—is remarkable in the context of his exceptional abilities.

David Dubal: Here we have probably in many aspects of piano technique the greatest of all techniques. Then you have the finest rhythmical sense, way above actually Toscanini's simplistic sense of rhythm compared to Horowitz. His sense of timing, his beguiling manner, or his diabolical—he was able to bring all types of moods that nobody else could.

Jessica Vosk: You’re listening to If This Hall Could Talk. I’m Jessica Vosk. We’ll return to the show in just a moment. Stay with us.

Jessica Vosk: Welcome back. Let’s get back to our investigation into one of the most unusual items in Carnegie Hall’s archives… the nails used to mark Vladimir Horowitz’s favorite spot on the stage. 

RECORDING OF LISZT’S 6 CONSOLATIONS, S. 172 - NO. 3 IN D-FLAT MAJOR (LENTO, PLACIDO) PERFORMED BY VLADIMIR HOROWITZ.

Yulianna Avdeeva: Because it always has this clear intonation in the—where the phrase goes to it has this [0:04:04] human voice, also this special ups and downs. And what is interesting that his also ability to work with so many different voices is amazing because this all—it doesn't matter how complicated the texture is, this voice, this main idea, main melody, or whatever it is, main motive always remains so clear, so precise that you always follow it. I think it's a question of great inspiration that he really knew exactly how—what kind of phrasing he would like to have, what kind sound.

David Dubal: Horowitz understood the concept of—what's the important word?—the nuanced sound, the sound. The piano is not an harpsichord; it's an instrument of inflection, but it also is a monochrome. It does not have the specific qualities of warmth that a violin has, let's say, or, you know, let's say, a great moment on the French horn even, a cello or whatever. The piano is, as Byron Janis calls it, as personal—as impersonal as a butler. 

Yulianna Avdeeva: It's his ability to bring some very complex pianistic textures, still that are very clear, very easy-to-follow line, and still keeping this extreme transparency without being messy, very loud in the sense that you have like a massive sound. Never happens to him in no repertoire.

David Dubal: "You know, if you had been born deaf, and you had one hour that they were giving you a hearing, it would be best to spend it all with Horowitz. Certainly, you don't need to hear a human word, but to hear one Sonata of Horowitz is to also show that he's not just the romantic literature, but he's the greatest single Scarlatti player that ever lived." 

<music contd>

Yulianna Avdeeva: He was one and only. He's like one of the gods of the piano.

Gino Francesconi: He's just one of the most legendary performers in our history. 

Gary Graffman: And he was awfully pleasant. I played for him, and I already learned something from him on that day; that if that were the only time I'd ever met him, I already would've gotten something out of him.

David Dubal: Growing up, only until that strange little period, which I was telling you about, when I actually met him, growing up, there was only Horowitz. I mean, of course, I loved Rubinstein, I loved Gilels, I loved all of the people that were coming from Russia. I had more of an education of the old pianists, even early in my life then, and it would serve me very well as a teacher at Juilliard because that class of recordings I did was like legendary. 

But Horowitz was my boy. Horowitz was everyone's boy. He was—he instilled in all of us the standard of what the piano could be, and what music could be from the hands. 

Jessica Vosk: While the placement of the piano was so important to Horowitz, the piano itself was essential. He even traveled with his own tuner.

Gino Francesconi: Franz Mohr, who was the head piano tuner at Steinway. And if you were on a certain level of artistic performance, when you went on the road, Franz Mohr, the tuner, went with you, along with your own piano.

RECORDING OF SCHUMANN’S ARABESKE IN C MAJOR, OP. 18 PERFORMED BY VLADIMIR HOROWITZ.

Jessica Vosk: More recently, Yulianna was performing at a venue that actually housed one of Horowitz’s pianos and she had the chance to play it.

Yulianna Avdeeva: And I hear already also on this piano the qualities, the musical qualities, which were important to him, and the sound, as I also mentioned, from the very beginning, this never-ending sound. So you touch the key in the middle register, and it sounds forever. It's not like, you know, you—it's like percussive way of many of modern pianos that you touch the key, and the sound drops off. So it feels like [claps]. And there it's—it—there is no gap. So it continuously—it's like really like a voice, yes? You take a note, and then slowly when the breath goes out, it gets just, yeah, a little softer, softer, and then it disappears. And this is, of course, in the myth [sp] that also explains this for me, his way of raising, his way of also playing difficult polyphonic textures, because it's a completely different listening as well. You listen also as a performer much longer. 

So you really literally follow the sound from the moment when it is being born, till the very last moment when it's disappearing. So it's the entire life of one thing, a particular sound. And this is amazing. This is just—so it was so inspiring to play it. 

Gary Graffman: He had, on his piano, little framed pictures of people he admired, or friends, or relatives, or—I don’t remember all of them. But one of them was Rachmaninoff, and it was on this thing, you know, this thing. And I—and he said, "Do you know the Études-Tableaux?" in whatever key it was, and I said, "You mean this one?" And I played, and I was looking at him. 

He was behind me on the couch. So, I turned around, and said, "You mean this one?" and played, you know, about—if there were 50 notes, I played 20 wrong notes. [laughs] My hand just went to the wrong part of the piano, at which point, that picture fell on the floor, and he [laughs]—I remember—he got pale. [laughs] Of all, of all the pictures on the piano, that one should fall when I messed up, messed up this Rachmaninoff piece. So, there were, you know, funny incidents like that.

Gino Francesconi: One time, I brought a friend because if the curtains were open, and you were on the other side of the street, you could actually look through the windows, and see a Picasso hanging over the fireplace. It was actually kind of fun. And people would complain because he practiced at 3:30, 4:00 in the morning, so he bought the brownstones on either side [laughs] so that he could practice whenever he wanted to. 

Gary Graffman: His routine, if it was a fairly nice day, would be to walk that half a block into Central Park, sit in the sun a little bit, and then go home. 

Gino Francesconi: And he loved going down into the Village, and having coffee, and sitting outside, and watching people going by, you know. And one time, he was down there at a coffee shop with the pianist Ivan Davis, who had just won a major competition. I don’t remember which one. And, so, they were sitting outside, having coffee, and Horowitz said to Ivan Davis, "Listen, if anybody comes up to us, I am not Horowitz. I'm not Horowitz." So, he said, "Okay, okay." So, at one point, these two young girls are walking by, and they have piano music in their hands, and they slowly stop, and they look, and then they keep walking by.

And then they come by again, and Horowitz whispered, "Remember, I'm not Horowitz." And, at one point, one of the girls comes up to the table, and says, "Excuse me, are you Ivan Davis?" So, the story goes Ivan Davis autographed the music, saying, "You don't know who's sitting next to me," and then they left. But Horowitz was taken aback at this with his insecurity issues that he had his whole life. 

Gary Graffman: At one point, when he started to make records—he wasn't going to give concerts yet but RCA, and I was with RCA Records too and—on a different level, of course. And they wanted him to make some more popular music, and mentioned some pops tunes that they wanted him to arrange in any way he wanted to arrange it but to include that. And he refused. And then there was a purge at RCA, and they dropped certain artists whose records were not selling all that much, including mine. 

So, I called him, and I said, "RCA just dropped me." He said, "Yeah, me too." And I said, "That's impossible." I said, "It's impossible." "No, they wanted me to do that, and I told them exactly what I thought of them, and slammed the phone down. 

Jessica Vosk: Vladimir Horowitz had this ability to truly move people, to make them feel something profound. And he was somehow accessible, being able to touch a universal place within all of us, something that music is so good at doing.

RECORDING OF J.S. BACH’S NUN KOMM, DER HEIDEN HEILAND, BWV. 659 PERFORMED BY VLADIMIR HOROWITZ.

Yulianna Avdeeva: I think that music is this other possibility when also you don't know what to say or you're very sad or you're very happy. You can—sometimes the smallest details, there always might be a music phrase from a piece, or maybe an entire piece or whatever, which you can play, and it feels like, oh, I shared it.

I think the biggest problem is that many people are scared that they—if they go to a classical concert, classical music concert, that maybe they will not understand something. But this is what I—what I—what I think is so important to, also from us, from artists, to explain that music is not only about, you know, understanding the form, knowing the background of the piece.

No, it's not about that. Music is about much, much more. It's—because it gives you so much. That's why I also think that it's so, so important for kids because you can use your fantasy, you can use your imagination, you can—you can imagine a story while you listen to a piece, or you can imagine that you are going to some place where you have never been, and maybe you will never be. 

Rob Hudson: It's strange to think of somebody of the stature of Horowitz experiencing stage fright or doubts about their performing. With Horowitz, I guess, I'm not so sure that it was stage fright. But he would have these doubts about whether he was, you know, really as good as people were saying or whatever. So, one of the biggest retirements was 12 years long, between 1953 and 1965

Jessica Vosk: So upon his return…

Rob Hudson: people were wrapped around the block trying to get tickets. 

Gino Francesconi: People waited in line, in line for days—for days. In the days when you could only get tickets at the box office, sometimes the line would go down to Sixth Avenue, and then around the corner, and then back up to the backstage of the hall.

And it's kind of a fun story that Vladimir Horowitz and his wife, Wanda, who was Toscanini's daughter, would sometimes come by and serve coffee and donuts to people waiting in line, which is really sweet, you know.

Jessica Vosk: Having an actual piece of the stage, the very one that Horowitz played on, that so many people have played on, is incredibly unique.

Gino Francesconi: It's so incredibly specific to Carnegie Hall, and it ties Horowitz to Carnegie Hall in a way that nothing else can, and to no other place, I mean, more almost than a photograph or a concert program. I mean, it's literally a piece of Carnegie Hall.

Jessica Vosk: You’ve been listening to If This Hall Could Talk, a podcast from Carnegie Hall, where we take you on a journey through some of the most iconic pieces in our archives, the objects that set the foundation for what the Hall is today. For images of the artifacts and more information on Carnegie Hall’s Rose Archives, please visit carnegiehall.org/history. 

Many thanks to Clive Gillinson and the dedicated staff of Carnegie Hall, as well as guests Gary Grafman, David DuBall, and Yuliana Avdeeva.  

If This Hall Could Talk is produced by SOUND MADE PUBLIC with Tania Ketenjian, Philip Wood, Emma Vecchione, Sarah Conlisk, Alessandro Santoro and Jeremiah Moore. 

Lead funding for the Digital Collections of the Carnegie Hall Susan W. Rose Archives has been generously provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Susan and Elihu Rose Foundation, and Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and the Metropolitan New York Library Council.

Our show is distributed by WQXR. We’d like to thank our partners there, including Ed Yim and Elizabeth Nonemaker. 

To listen to the full season, subscribe to If This Hall Could Talk wherever you get podcasts. We’d love for you to support the show by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a review and a rating on your favorite podcast platform. And if you happen to come across some special artifact from the history of Carnegie Hall, let us know. You can reach us at IfThisHallCouldTalk@carnegiehall.org. We’re always on the lookout! 

Thanks for listening. I’m Jessica Vosk.