Vladimir Horowitz plays Schumann’s Träumerei at the age of 83 at the Moscow Conservatory on his return in 1986, three years before his death.

There is some marvellous film footage of Horowitz playing Schumann’s Traumerei that focus entirely on the 83-year-old pianist himself and his fingers.

It is of course spellbinding. But this version tugs even harder at the heartstrings by scanning the audience to show the effect of his playing on those listening.

Watch out for the tears silently running down the cheeks of the man, quite probably a member of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party elite, at 1.27. He is not alone.

What makes this performance all the more poignant is that this recital – in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory in 1986 – came on his return to the USSR after leaving in 1925, and three years before his death.

Vladimir Horowitz was born in Kiev/Kyiv in 1903 (then part of the Russian Empire) and studied at the Kiev Conservatory before emigrating to Germany in December 1925. He settled in America in 1939, becoming a US citizen five years later.

Composed by Schumann a century earlier in 1838, Traumerei (aka ‘Dreaming’) is the seventh and best known of his series of 13 short pieces called Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood).

It’s a depiction of childhood innocence, vulnerability and gentleness, its sweetly sentimental theme representing the composer’s fond view of his own childhood, inspired by the composer’s future wife Clara.

It is said that when Soviet radio stations broadcast this piece after Germany surrendered and the Second World War was over; an apt choice since Horowitz was Jewish.

He once quipped that there were only three types of pianist: Jewish ones, homosexual ones and bad ones. He was definitely the first, almost certainly the second – and anything but the third of those.