In MMD 981105 D. L. Bullock wrote:

> Someone said that Horowitz kept his piano that way.  My comment is,
> at the time he began playing again he was old and set in his ways,
> and beginning to be unable to hear as well as when he was 20.  He
> had to have the hammers that hard so he could hear it the way we hear
> a mellow piano.  I find it painful to listen to his later recordings
> for this reason, musical though they may be.

Part of the hardness is the technology of CBS records in the 1960s.
The recent reissues of the Masterworks recordings of Horowitz (the ones
with blue covers, such as SK53472) are much pleasanter to listen to
than the original LPs or the first CD transfers.  The Sony CD called
"The Last Recordings" is also not hard.

I think the Horowitz piano was particularly difficult to record.
Unfortunately I never heard him play live.

Regards

Don Cox
doncox@enterprise.net