[pianotech] Story about Horowitz

[Zeno Wood]

Someone at the Concert Department here at the college passed this along to
me, a fun story about Horowitz.  Dante Negro, as it explains, was Concert
Manager here back in the 60s.
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The following are three memorable encounters that Dante Negro had with
Vladimir Horowitz:



            The first time Dante Negro met Vladimir Horowitz was at the
grand reopening of La Scala Opera House in Milano on May 11, 1946. Arturo
Toscanini was conducting for the very first time again in Italy after the
fall of the Fascist regime. At that time Dante Negro was Chief of the United
States Information Service (USIS) in Italy. The American Consulate and the
USIS were hosting the post-concert reception. However, Maestro Toscanini was
too tired to attend this gala event, so he sent his son-in-law,Vladimir
Horowitz (married to Toscanini’s daughter, Wanda), to represent him. It was
here that Dante Negro first met Mr. Horowitz, who was immediately struck by
the dashing American diplomat and his beautiful, young Italian bride-to-be,
Ardemia Dall’Ongaro. Mr. Horowitz impressed them with his impeccable
Italian.

            In 1965, Dante Negro was the Concert Manager of the Performing
Arts Series of Brooklyn College, having left the State Department in 1948 to
return to his academic career. He had engaged Vladimir Horowitz to perform a
concert as part of the Brooklyn College 1965-66 season. Horowitz was just
then returning to the concert stage after years of seclusion. Part of his
return to performing was to be a series of 4 o’clock Sunday afternoon
concerts at Carnegie Hall. In preparation for these concerts, he scheduled a
special rehearsal at Carnegie Hall before a very small, invited audience.
Dante Negro was one of the select few who had been invited and he would not
let this historic occasion go by without including his family, especially
since the rehearsal date coincided with his middle daughter’s birthday.

            On the afternoon of November 9, 1965, the Negro family joined
the other invited guests in the center section of the orchestra at Carnegie
Hall and waited in hushed anticipation for the great Horowitz to take the
stage. After a few moments, with the house lights still on, Mr. Horowitz
walked briskly onto the stage, barely acknowledged the audience, and sat at
the piano.  He continued to sit motionless at the piano for what seemed an
eternity. The audience collectively held its breath. Then slowly, Horowitz
raised his hands to the keys and his fingers flew across the keyboard
flawlessly. After the first few pieces he took a break; upon returning to
the stage, he turned to the audience and announced he would play a piece by
Chopin.

             After a few moments the house lights on the top tier of
Carnegie Hall began to flicker. Tier by tier, the lights flickered and went
out until the entire hall was in darkness except for the side sconces of the
orchestra that retained a dim glow. Mrs. Negro turned to her daughters to
remark that this dramatic lighting effect was carrying atmosphere to an
extreme.  Just then the lights on stage went out and all of Carnegie Hall
was plunged into utter blackness. Vladimir Horowitz continued to play, never
missing a note. A stagehand suddenly appeared with a flashlight which he
held over the keyboard until the end of the piece. Then the house manager
came on stage to announce that Carnegie Hall had suffered a power outage.
Mr. Horowitz declared that he did not mind playing in the dark if the
audience did not mind listening in the dark. So, a stage hand returned, this
time with a candelabrum which he placed on the piano, a la Liberace. Mr.
Horowitz played on.

            At the end of the rehearsal, the house manager returned to the
stage and announced that the whole block had suffered a loss of electricity
and that the audience would have to be evacuated via the stage door. While
winding their way through the maze of backstage corridors, the audience
gradually learned the scope of the power outage from a stagehand listening
to the news on his transistor radio. The entire eastern seaboard was blacked
out. The audience joined the millions of New Yorkers on the city’s dark
streets, facing the crisis with typical New York good humor. Dante Negro and
his family drove slowly home to Brooklyn across the Manhattan Bridge, past
the stalled subway trains crammed with rush-hour commuters and the streams
of people forced to make their way home on foot, and marveled at the
silhouetted skyline lit by a full moon, the music of Vladimir Horowitz
reverberating through it all.

.           A few months later, when Horowitz arrived at Brooklyn College
for the scheduled concert, Dante and Ardemia Negro were there to greet him.
The moment Mr. Horowitz saw them he said, in perfect Italian, “I met you in
Milano in 1946, at the reopening of La Scala.” He then asked to check the
piano. Dante Negro brought him on stage, where Horowitz proceeded to play a
few measures.  He abruptly stopped, turned to Mr. Negro, and asked for a
phone book. When it was brought to him, he placed it on the piano bench, sat
on it, and continued to play a few measures more. Once again he stopped,
stood up, tore out one sheet of paper from the phone book, replaced the book
on the bench, sat down on it again, and continued to play. “Now, that’s
perfect”, he said!

.
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