... Regina Horowitz was at that time probably a more advanced pianist than Volodya, but she played the standard repertoire, like Chopin’s ballades and mazurkas. When Volodya sat down at the piano, he played something totally unusual: his own version of the sword-forging scene from Wagner’s Sigfried, or improvisations on themes from Tristan und Isolde, or enormous chunks from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Coq d’Or. Pianists never performed things like this in concerts! I was stunned, astonished. It was a musical hurricane.