DG: 4777558

Horowitz in Hamburg - The Last Concert

On 21 June 1987, before an ecstatic audience in Hamburg’s Musikhalle, 83-year-old Vladimir Horowitz gave the last concert of a career that stretched over nearly seven decades. The recital, taped by North German Radio (NDR), lay in their archives virtually untouched for more than 20 years (one encore was included in Deutsche Grammophon’s anthology The Magic of Horowitz in 2003). It is now being released in its entirety for the first time in any format. The repertoire is familiar, with Mozart and Schumann (Kinderszenen op. 15) to the fore. There is a last heroic assault on Chopin’s Polonaise in A flat op. 53 and the final scintillating encore is Moszkowski’s Etincelles, a Horowitz evergreen. The recording provides a unique souvenir of Horowitz’s final public appearance, where the sense of occasion and immediacy is palpable.