When I joined Horowitz soon after, the two of us went to a Kreisler concert in Paris. We paid six dollars per ticket – a huge sum in those days; we could have had two rooms in the best hotel for that! I remember we were seated in a box of the Grand Opéra among a refined crowd. Kreisler played Bach’s E Major Concerto, then Viotti’s Twenty-second Concerto, and finished with Beethoven. I don’t remember the conductor, but with Kreisler it didn’t matter. Kreisler performed without paying much attention to the orchestra and conductor. With anyone else, this attitude would have seemed frivolous, but Kreisler was a genius and played so ravishingly! This time Horowitz was entranced, as was I. The concert ended, the audience departed. But Volodya and I still sat in the box, alone. We were destroyed! An old usher tried to shake us up. “The concert is over, young gentlemen. Everyone’s gone, they’re all gone, go home.” But we couldn’t stand up from our seats. And we decided: We’re going to stay in the West! << less