Nobody played Rach 3 as well as Horowitz did, but his Rach 3 is more about Horowitz than Rachmaninov. By his final performances of it, it sounds almost like he's making a talmudic commentary on the piece. There are so many insights into it that you feel as though you understand how the piece is constructed from A to Z, and yet it's not Rachmaninov, who clearly wanted his art disguised. As a piece of music, it's a lot emptier than its fireworks make it look, and there are maybe three performances I know of which do not make the concerto feel fifteen minutes too long for its material. Rach's own, maybe Zoltan Kocsis, and the great Earl Wild.
Aside from coruscating virtuosity, they have no patience with the customary swooning romanticism of most 'finger jocks.' There are plenty of composers in which that style works - including Schumann and even Beethoven, but Rach was a cynically cold as ice classicist who merely disguised himself as a romantic. He was, in every sense, a musical genius, whose romantic expression belies a labyrinth of formal relationships. But like Mendelssohn and Saint-Seans, everything in his work is pro-forma - for all the ingenious construction, everything is done to pre-existing models. There is a barely a single innovation anywhere, and therefore, if you do not stick to the classical form very strictly, his musical architecture of stone evaporates into sugar.
Rachmaninov was practically the only pianist immune to that temptation, but Wild was really the only pianist who approached Rachmaninov's 'realism.' This cold shower so much more convincing than the more traditional thunder and slop of every Russian pianist (save Rach and Horowitz).... and Argerich (ducks).....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX8BDsa4sHo
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