Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor / Mozart: Piano Sonata in F major, K. 332 / Bach arr. Liszt: O

Polish pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski was born in 1892, began performing in 1901, knew Fauré, and had a career that lasted until shortly before his death in 1993. Perhaps more than any other pianist widely recorded in modern times, he had artistic roots in the nineteenth century. "Legend" is an overused word, but by the time these live recordings were made in Britain in 1984 and 1987 (the later set two days before the pianists 95th birthday) Horszowski certainly merited the word. His fingers had slowed down by this time, but the shapes of his interpretations, which depended on a sweeping sense of large line combined with great flexibility in local texture and detail, were intact. Consider the opening movement of the Mozart Piano Sonata in F major, K. 332 (track 7), in which Horszowski takes the repeat. His reading of the exposition has such a sense of controlled waywardness that the opening theme, taken in deadpan neutrality, feels like a train dragged back onto the track when its repeat comes along; you cant help but smile at that. In shorter pieces by Villa-Lobos and Mendelssohn and in a couple of Chopin mazurkas, he is still capable of really charmed moments, and Liszts technically demanding arrangement of Bachs Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543, packs a punch. The rarely heard Prelude of Pablo Casals, opening the program, was a tribute paid among artists and friends. Only the Chopin Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58, is not quite there, but you can hear the unusual Beethovenian weight Horszowski gave to Chopins larger works. The sound is not good, and one marvels anew at how British audiences can unleash volleys of coughs and wheezes even in the middle of June, but this disc is nonetheless a worthwhile historical document.