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Vladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Horowitz is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, and his technically flawless yet emotionally intense performances of Romantic-era repertoire established him as one of the most celebrated classical performers of his generation following his emigration from the Soviet Union. His 1965 return to Carnegie Hall after a 12-year self-imposed retirement from public performance, driven by severe stage fright and depression, became one of the most celebrated comeback concerts in classical music history, with tickets reportedly selling out within hours. Horowitz's 1986 return to the Soviet Union for a historic Moscow concert, his first performance there in 61 years, carried significant symbolic weight during the late Cold War era and drew a global television audience for what was framed as a genuinely historic cultural moment. His combination of extraordinary technical virtuosity and his periodic dramatic returns from self-imposed retirement, each treated as a major cultural event, has made Horowitz one of the most legendary and closely followed classical pianists of the modern recording era.
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Glenn Gould
Glenn Gould's 1955 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations became one of the best-selling classical piano recordings in history, and his unconventional, highly personal interpretive approach to Bach's keyboard works established him as one of the most distinctive and idiosyncratic classical pianists of the 20th century. His decision to retire entirely from public concert performance in 1964, at just 31, to focus exclusively on studio recording reflected Gould's stated belief that live concerts were an outdated performance format, a genuinely radical position for a pianist at the height of his concert career. Gould's eccentric personal habits, including his practice of humming audibly while playing and his insistence on using a specific low, custom chair for every performance regardless of venue, made him one of classical music's most distinctively idiosyncratic public figures. His combination of genuinely innovative interpretive approaches to canonical repertoire and his radical rejection of live concert performance in favor of studio recording has made Gould one of the most intellectually and stylistically significant classical pianists of the recording era.
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