His teachers included his mother, then Percy Goetschius, William J. Henderson, Edwin Hughes, and Krehbiel at the Institute of Musical Art, which later became the Juilliard School.
Gorodnitzki won the Schubert Memorial Prize in 1930, which launched a long concert career, He made his debut with the New York Philharmonic Symphony Society and played his first Carnegie Hall solo recital in 1931.
During his performing career, he toured the United States, Canada and Latin America, appearing under the direction of conductors such as Fritz Reiner, Leopold Stokowski and Pierre Monteux, among many others.
Those who worked with him at Juilliard included Eugene Istomin, Garrick Ohlsson, Dennis Russell Davies, Janina Fialkowska, Tom Pierson, Michael Korstick, Şahan Arzruni, Jack Winerock, Manfred Clynes, Lois Towles, Angela Cheng, Sophia Agranovich, Craig Sheppard, Dana Perelman, André Laplante and many others.
His recorded legacy for Capitol, EMI/Angel and Columbia includes solo works by Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt, Chopin, Schumann, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Godowsky, Paderewski and Debussy.