Vladimir Horowitz was hailed as one of the greatest pianists who ever lived, yet he sometimes had to be physically pushed onto the stage by his management. Born in Kiev in 1903, he dreamed of being a composer until the Russian Revolution wiped out his family’s wealth and forced him to tour the Soviet Union, playing two-hour recitals for payment in bread, butter, and chocolate. In 1925 he left for the West with foreign currency hidden in his shoes, and at his 1928 Carnegie Hall debut he famously broke away from conductor Thomas Beecham’s sluggish tempo and hijacked Tchaikovsky’s first concerto.

This episode examines the price of that virtuosity: his flat-fingered “cobra strike” technique, his rewriting of Mussorgsky and Chopin with the blessing of Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev, his marriage to Wanda Toscanini, and the hidden life he led as a gay man in mid-century America. We cover the tantrums described by his assistant Kenneth Leedom, conversion therapy in the 1940s, electroshock treatment, and two long withdrawals from the stage, followed by the disastrous 1983 tour and the triumphant 1986 return to Moscow that left Soviet officials weeping.

• How playing for survival rations in the early 1920s rewired Horowitz’s relationship with the piano
• The Carnegie Hall debut where he ignored the conductor and critics compared him to a storm on the Russian steppes
• Why living composers welcomed his alterations to their scores
• The depression, hidden sexuality, and treatments behind his absences from 1936 to 1938 and 1953 to 1965
• His Sunday-afternoon-only concerts, Stars and Stripes Forever encores, and peaceful death in 1989