Horowitz left Soviet Russia with dollars sewn into shoes
Vladimir Horowitz (1903–1989), Kiev-born pianist often ranked among history’s greatest, fled via Germany in December 1925—ostensibly to study with Schnabel, secretly packing currency in his shoes. Early Soviet tours paid him in bread, butter, and chocolate amid civil-war scarcity.
Some sources place the birth in Berdichev; uncle Alexander’s Scriabin friendship won the ten-year-old an audition where the composer praised exceptional talent. Kiev Conservatory study from 1912 under Vladimir Puchalsky, Sergei Tarnowsky, and Felix Blumenfeld honed the thunderous yet singing tone audiences later chased worldwide.
He first performed abroad in Berlin on 18 December 1925, then in Paris, London and New York, and when the Soviet Union picked him for the 1927 Chopin Competition he chose to stay in the West. His US debut came at Carnegie Hall on 12 January 1928 in Tchaikovsky's First Concerto under Thomas Beecham, also making his American debut, with whom he clashed over tempos. In 1933 he married Wanda Toscanini, the conductor's daughter; lacking a shared tongue, they spoke French.
Self-doubt dogged him. He sometimes had to be pushed onstage and stepped away from the stage four times, the longest break running twelve years from 1953 to 1965, and he underwent electroshock treatment for depression in the 1960s and 1970s. His 1983 performances in the United States and Japan were marred by memory lapses, prompting a Japanese critic to liken him to a cracked antique vase.
His recordings run from Welte-Mignon piano rolls in 1926 and Victor discs from 1928 to the famous 1965 Carnegie Hall return for Columbia. He taught only seven students, among them Byron Janis and Gary Graffman. In 1986, some six decades after leaving, he returned to Soviet soil, playing Moscow and Leningrad, then won back Tokyo audiences and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.
Source: Vladimir Horowitz
