Anton Rubinstein

Rubinstein's portrait by Ilya Repin.

This article is about the 19th century Russian pianist and composer. For the 20th century Polish pianist with a similar name, see Arthur Rubinstein.

Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein (Template:Lang-ru), (November 28, 1829 – November 20, 1894) was a Russian pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival to Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the greatest keyboard virtuosi.

According to former New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg in his book The Great Pianists, many of Rubinstein's contemporarties felt he bore a striking resemblance to Ludwig van Beethoven, not just physically but also in his keyboard playing. Under his hands, it was said, the piano erupted volcanically. Audience members wrote of going home limp after one of his recitals, knowing they had witnessed a force of nature. Ignaz Moscheles, who had known Beethoven intimately, wrote, "Rubinstein's features and short, irrepressible hair remind me of Beethoven." Liszt referred to Rubinstein as "Van II."

Life

Rubinstein was the third child born to Jewish parents in Vikhvatinets (now in Transnistria, Republic of Moldova), a village on the Dnyestr River, about 150 kilometers northwest of Odessa. Before he was two years old, his paternal grandfather ordered all 60 members of the Rubinstein family to convert from Judaism to Russian Orthadoxism. This was to avoid the consequences of an anti-Semitic ukase recently enacted by Tsar Nicholas I.

Rubinstein, brought up as a Christian at least in name, lived in a household where three languages were spoken—Yiddish, Rusian and German. Much later, when his musical "Russianness" was called into question by musical nationalist Mily Balakirev and others in The Five, Rubinstein might have been thinking of this part of his childhood, among other things, when he wrote of himself in his notebooks,

“Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew. Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary. My conclusion is that I am neither fish nor fowl – a pitiful individual”.

A benefit of conversion was that it alowed the Rubinsteins to travel freely, something not permitted for Jews in Russia at the time. Rubinstein's father opened a pencil factory in Moscow. His mother, a competent musician, began giving piano lessons to Rubinstein at five. He appraently progressed rapidly. Within a year and a half Alexander Villoing, Moscow's leading piano teacher at the time, heard and accepted Rubinstein as a non-paying student.

Prodigy

Rubinstein made his first public appearance, a charity benefit concert, in Moscow's Petrovsky Park at the age of nine. Later that year Rubinstein's mother sent him, accompanied by Villoing, to enroll at the Paris Conservatoire. Director Luigi Cherubini, however, refused even an audition to Rubinstein, due to the flood of young prodigies who had flooded the Paris musical scene.

Rubinstein and Villoing remained in Paris a year, Rubinstein sequestered while Villoing made him work at the piano many hours each day. Rubinstein gave a few private performances. In December 1840, Rubinstein played in the Salle Erard for an audience that included Frederic Chopin and Franz Liszt.Chopin invited Rubinstein to his studio and played for him. Liszt acclaimed the young Rubinstein as his successor but advised Villoing to take him to Germany to study composition. Instead of following Liszt's advice, Villoing took Rubinstein on an extended concert tour of Europe and Western Russia. They finally returned to Moscow in June 1843, after an absence of three and a half years.

Shortly before the pair returned, Rubinstein's mother had talked with Liszt during a concert tour he had made in Russia. Determined to follow Liszt's advice, she wanted a thorough grounding in musical threory for both Rubinstein and his younger brother Nikolai. To raise money for this, she sent Rubinstein and Villoing on a tour of Rusia. When the tour ended, Rubinstein and Nikolai were dispatched by themselves to St. Petersburg to play for Tsar Nicholas I and the Imparial family at the Winter Palace. Rubinstein was 14 years old; Nikolai was eight.

Berlin

In spring 1844, Rubinstein, Nikolai, his mother and his sister Luba travelled to Berlin. Here he met with, and was supported by, Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Mendelssohn, who had heard Rubinstein when he had toured with Villoing, said he needed no further piano study but sent Nikolai to Theodor Kullak for instruction. Meyerbeer directed both boys to Siegfried Dehn for work in composition and theory. A Greek Orthodox prist instructed them in the catechism and Russian grammar, and both boys studied other subjects. These non-musical lessons were short-lived. Still, Rubinstein grew up to be a highly cultured, widely-read artist. He was fluent in Russian, German, Frensh and English and could read read Italian and Spanish literature.

Word came in the summer of 1846 that Rubinstein's father was gravely ill. Rubinstein was left in Berlin while his mother, sister and brother returned to Russia. By the time they arrived, Rubinstein's father had died. His business had failed; the family had to scramble to make money to survive and pay his debts. Rubinstein had to fend for himself. At first he continued his studies with Dehn, then with Adolph Marx, while composing in earnest. Now 17, he knew he could no longer pass as a child prodigy. He soughtk out Liszt in Vienna, hoping Liszt would accept him as a pupil.

Liszt's reaction to Rubinstein in Vienna was surprising and, for the ever-generous pianist, extremely unusual. After Rubinstein had played his audition, Liszt said, very coldly, "A talented man must win the goal of his ambition by his own unassisted efforts." This is the only known instance Liszt turned down a brilliant talent. At this point, Rubinstein was living in acute poverty. Liszt did nothing to help him. Other calls Rubinstein made to potential patrons came to no avail.

Rubinstein began giving piano lessons, continued composing, even wrote literary, philosophical and critical essays. After a year in Vienna he gave a concert in the Bösendörfersaal. It did not go well; months of composition had severely reduced his time practicing the piano. Together with a flautist he embarked on a concert tour of Hungary, then returned to Berlin and continued giving lessons.

Back to Russia

The Revolution of 1848 forced Rubinstein back to Russia. Spending the next five years mainly in St. Petersburg, Rubinstein taught, gave concerts and preformed frequently at the Imperianl court. The Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, sister to Tsar Nicholas I, became his most devoted patroness. By 1852, he had become a leading figure in St. Petersburg's musical life, performing as a soloist and collaborating with some of the outstanding instrumentalists and vocalists who came to the Russian capital.

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"Van II": Rubinstein's physical likeness to Ludwig van Beethoven was considered uncanny.

In 1854 Rubinstein began a four-year concert tour of Europe. This was his first major concert tour in a decade. Now 24, he now felt ready to offer himself to the public as a fully-developed pianist as well as a composer of worth. He very shortly reestablished his reputation as a virtuoso. Ignaz Moscheles wrote in 1855 what would become a widespread opinion about Rubinstein: "In power and execution he is inferior to no one."

He broke up this tour with a lengthy stay in Paris. His good friend there was Camille Saint-Saëns. For a time, the two were practically inseparable. Saint-Saëns conducted orchestras for Rubinstein; Rubinstein conducted orchestras for Saint-Saëns. When not collaborating in public, they played four-hand piano music at home. Saint-Saëns recollected many years later, "We made music with passion simply for the sake of making it."

Rubinstein spent another tour break, in the winter of 1856-7, with Elena Pavlovna and much of the Imperial royal family at Nice. These three months would become crucial ones. Rubinstein had already noted both his patroness's great intelligence and her great influence in terms of reform over ber brother Nicholas I. (She would exercise a similar influence over her nephew, Alexander II, resulting in, among other things, the freeing of the serfs.) Now patroness and artist, with others present, began discussing plans to raise the level of musical education in their homeland.

These discussions bore fruit at first in the founding of the Russian Musical Society (RMS) in 1859. The opening of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the first music school in Russia and an outgrowth of the RMS, followed in 1862. Prior to the founding of the conservatory, many talented Russian musicians felt they needed to leave their homeland in order to make their fame and fortune. The establishment of the conservatory became a new focal point for Russian music, instilling a sense of national pride and resulting in many of these talented musicians returning home from Europe to teach and compose.

The Conservatory was one of the things closest to Rubinstein's heart. He not only founded it and was its first director but also recruited an imposing pool of talent for its faculty. He also drew a tremendous amount of criticism from the Russian Five; their leader, Mily Balakirev, was especially and rabidly vocal. They were aiming for a Russian style of classical muusic and claimed—actually correctly—that Rubinstein was German-oriented conservative. In protest, Balakirev founded a competitive Free School.

Rubinstein's attitude toaard the Five was consistent with both his basic musical outlook and his personal generosity. He rejected their philosophy but played and conducted those works of theirs which he judged worthwhile. Much later, Sergei Rachmaninov would rave especially of Rubinstein's handling of Balakirev's Islamey.

By 1867, ongoing tensions with the Balakirev camp, along with related matters, led to intense dissention within the Conservatory's faculty. Rubinstein resigned and returned to touring.

The American tour

At the behest of the Steinway & Sons piano company, Rubinstein toured the United States during the 1872-3 season. Steinway's contract with Rubinstein caled on him to give 200 concerts at 200 dollars per concert (payable in gold—Rubinstein distrusted both United States banks and United States paper Money). Rubinstein stayed in America 239 days, giving 215 concerts—sometimes two and three a day in as many cities

Portrait bust of Anton Rubinstein on his grave in Tikhvin Cemetery,Saint Petersburg

Rubinstein wrote of his American experience, "May Heaven preserve us from such slavery! Under these conditions there is no chance for art—one simply grows into an automaton, performing mechanical work; no dignity remains to the artist; he is lost.... The receipts and the success were invariably gratifying, but it was all so tedious that I began to despise myself and my art. So profound was my dissatisfact that when several years later I was asked to repeat my American tour, I refused pointblank...."

Despite his misery, Rubinstein made enough money from his American tour to give him financial security for the rest of his life. Upon his return to Russia, he "hastened to invest in real estate", building a dacha in Peterhof, not far from St. Petersburg, for himself and his family.

Later life

Rubinstein continued to make tours as a pianist and give appearances as a conductor. In 1887, he returned to the St. Petersburg Conservatory with the goal of improving overall standards. He removed inferior students, fired and demoted many professors, made entrance and examination requirements more stringent and revised the curriculum. He led semi-weekly teachers' classes through the whole keyboard literature and gave some of the more gifted piano students personal coaching. During the 1889-90 academic year he gave weekly lecture-recitals for the students.

He resigned again—and left Russia—in 1891 over Imperial demands that Conservatory admittance, and later annual prizes to students, be awarded along racial quotas instead of purely by merit. These quotas were considered anti-Semitic.

Rubinstein resettled in Dresden and started giving concerts again in Germany and Austria. Nearly all of these concerts were charity benefit events. Rubinstein also coached a few pianists and taught his only private piano student, Josef Hofmann. Hofmann would become one of the finest keyboard artists of the 20th century

Despite his sentiments on politics in Russia, Runinstein returned there occasionally to visit friends and family. He gave his final concert in St. Petersburg on January 14, 1894. With his health failing rapidly, Rubinstein moved back to Peterhof in the summer of 1894. He died there on November 28 of that year, having suffered from heart disease for some time.

The street in St. Petersburg where he lived is now named after him.

His pianism

Technique

Villiong had worked with Rubinstein on hand position and finger dexterity. From watching Liszt, Rubinstein had learned about freedom of arm movement. Theodor Leschetizky, who taught piano at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when it opened, likened muscular relaxation at the piano to a singers deep breathing. He would remark to his students about "what deep breaths Rubinstein used to take at the beginning of long phrases, and also what repose he had and what dramatic pauses."

In his book The Great Pianists, former New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg describes Rubinstein's playing as that "of extraordinary breadth, virility and vitality, immense sonority and technical grandeur in which all too often technical sloppiness asserted itself." When caught up in the moment of performance, Rubinstein did not seem to care how many wrong notes he played as long as his conception of the piece he was playing came through. Rubinstein himself admitted, after a concert in Berlin in 1875, "If I could gather up all the notes that I let fall under the piano, I could give a second concert with them."

Part of the problem might have been the sheer size of Rubinstein's hands. They were gargantuan, and many observers commented on them. Pianist Josef Lhevinne described them as "fat, pudgy ... with fingers so broad at the finger-tips that he often had difficulty in not striking two notes at once." Josef Hofmann commented that Rubinstein's fifth finger "was as thick as my thumb—think of it! Then his fingers were square at the ends, with cushions on them. It was a wonderful hand."

Equally outsized were what Rubinstein did with those hands. German piano teacher Ludwig Deppe advised American pianist Amy Fay to watch carefully how Rubinstein struck his chords: "Nothing cramped about him! He spreads his hands as if he were going to take in the universe, and takes them up with the greatest freedom and abandon!"

Reactions

Because of the slap-dash moments in Rubinstein's playing, some more academic, polished players, especially German-trained ones, seriously questioned Rubinstein's greatness. Those who valued interpretation as much or more than pure technique found much to praise. Hans von Bülow, who had his pedantic moments himself, nevertheless called Rubinstein "the Michelangelo of music."

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"The Michaelangelo of music": Rubinstein in concert attire.

Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick expressed what Schonberg calls "the majority point of view" in an 1884 review. After complaining of the over-three-hour length of Rubinstein's recital, Hanslick admitted that the sensual element of the pianist's playing gave pleasure to listeners. Both Rubinstein's virtues and flaws, Hanslick commented, sprang from an untapped natural strength and elemental freshness. "Yes, he plays like a god," Hanslick wrote in closing, "and we do not take it amiss if, from time to time, he changes, like Jupiter, into a bull."

Rubinstein was also proficient in improvisation, a practice then waning. Composer Karl Goldmark wrote of one recital where Rubinstein improvised on a motive from the last movement of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony:

"He counterpointed it in the bass; then developed it first as a canon, next as a four-voiced fugue, and again transformed it into a tender song. He then returned to Beethoven's original form, later changing it to a gay Viennese waltz, with its own peculiar harmonies, and finally dashed into cascades of brilliant passages, a perfect storm of sound in which the original theme was still unmistakable. It was superb."

Tone

Schonberg called Rubinstein's piano tone the most sensuous of any of the great pianists . Fellow pianist Rafael Joseffy compared it to "a golden French horn" Rubinstein himself told an interviewer, "Strength with lightness, that is one secret of my touch.... I have sat hours trying to imitate the timbre of [Italian tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini's] voice in my playing." Rubinstein told the young Sergei Rachmaninov how he achieved that tone: just press upon the keys until the blood oozes from your fingertips.

When he wanted to, Rubinstein could play with extreme lightness, grace and delicacy. He rarely displayed that side of his nature, however. He had learned quickly that audiences came to hear him thunder, so he accommodated them.

Rubinstein's forceful playing and powerful temperament made an especially strong impression during his American tour, where playing of this kind had never been heard before. During this tour, Rubinstein received more press attention than any other figure until the appearance of Ignacy Jan Paderewski a generation later.

Programs

Rubinstein's concert programs, like his playing style, were gargantuan. Hanslick mentioned in his 1884 review that the pianist played more than 20 pieces in one concert in Vienna, including three sonatas (the Schumann F sharp minor plus Beethoven's D minor and Op. 101 in A). Rubinstein was a man with an extremely robust constitution and apparently never tired; audiences apparently stimulated his adrenals to the point where he acted like a superman. He had a colossal repertoire and an equally colosal memory until he turned 50, when he began to have memory lapses and had to play from the printed note. Pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski heard Rubinstein toward the end of his career, remembering great moments alternating with memory slips and chaos.

Rubinstein was most famous for his series of historical recitals—seven consecutive concerts covering the history of piano music. Each of these prorams was enormous. The second, devoted to Beethoven sonatas, consisted of the Moonlight, D minor, Waldstein, Appassionata, E minor, A major (Op. 101), E major (Op. 109) and C minor (Op. 111). Again, this was all included in one recital. The fourth concert, devoted to Schumann, contained the Fantasy in C, Kreisleriana, Études symphoniques, Sonata in F sharp minor, a set of short pieces and Carnival. This did not include encores, which Rubinstein sprayed liberally at every concert. Rubinstein concluded his American tour with this series, playing the seven recitals over a nine-day period in New York in May 1873.

Rubinstein played this series of historical recitals in Russia and throughout Eastern Europe. In Moscow he gave this series on consecutive Tuesday evenings in the Hall of the Nobility, repeating each concert the following morning in the German Club for the benefit of students, free of charge.

Rachmaninov on Rubinstein

Sergei Rachmaninov first attended Rubinstein's histortical concerts as a twelve-year-old piano student. Forty-four years later he told his biographer Oscar von Riesemann, "[His playing] gripped my whole imagination and had a marked influence on my ambition as a pianist."

Rachmaninov explained to von Riesemann, "It was not so much his magnificent technique that held one spellbound as the profound, spiritually refined musicianship, which spoke from every note and every bar he played and singled him out as the most original and unequalled pianist in the world." Rachmaninov biographer Barrie Martyn suggests that it might not have been by chance that the two pieces Rachmaninov singled out for praise from Rubinstein's concerts—Beethoven's Appassionata and Chopin's "Funeral March Sonata—both became cornerstones of Rachmaninov's own recital programs.

Rachmaninov admitted that Rubinstein was not note-perfect at these concerts, remembering a memory lapse during Balakirev's Islamey, where Rubinstein improvised in the style of the piece until remembering the rest of it four minutes later. In Rubinstein's defense, however, Rachmaninov said that "for every possible mistake [Rubinstein] may have made, he gave, in return, ideas and musical tone pictures that would have made up for a million mistakes."

Teaching

Spontaneity

Josef Hofmann, Rubinstein's only private pupil.

Josef Hofmann came to Rubinstein after a considerable career as a child prodigy. Rubinstein was already acqainted with Hofmann's playing, having heard him in Beethoven's Concerto No. 3 in C minor when Hofmann was eight yars old. Rubinstein had been highly impressed with what he heard and accepted Hofmann as a student. According to Hofmann, he was the only private pupil Rubinstein ever accepted.

In their 40 lessons between 1892 and 1894, Rubinstein never played for Hofmann and could seem capricious in his advice. Hofmann wrote, many years later, "Rubinstein was much given to whims and moods, and he often grew enthusiastic about a certain conception only to prefer a different one the next day. Yet he was always logical in his art, and though he always aimed at hitting from various points of view he always hit it on the head. Thus he never permitted me to bring to him, as a lesson, any composition any more than once. He explained this to me once by saying that he might forget in the next lesson what he told me in the previous one, and by drawing an entirely new picture only confuse my mind."

Rubinstein's capriciousnes was nothing new. At the St. Petersburg Conservatory, his students never really knew what to expect. Their teacher might begin class by reciting a poem he wanted them to set to music, due by the next lesson. At other times he would have a student improvise a rondo, a polonaise, a minuet, or come other form. "Over and over again [Rubinstein] repeated how harmful timidy was, advised that one should not stop over a difficult place, but leave it and press on, accustoming oneself to write in sketches with indications of this or that form—and to avoid resorting to a piano."

Rubinstein's aim was to foster a full development of his students' imaginations. With this goal in mind, Rubinstein in his clases apparently taught by the spur of the moment. Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky's friend and fellow-classmate Herman Laroche believed that Rubinstein had no idea what he was going to say five minutes before class began. This lack of preparation made Rubinstein lectures disorderly. Nevertheless, he was a stimulating teacher with a knack for devising ways to revive flagging interest.

Compositional conservatism

Despite his wish to encourage his students' imaginations, Rubinstein's conservative compositional tendencies got the better of him. Richard Wagner visited St. Petersburg in 1863, conducting excerpts from his then-unperformed Der Ring des Niebelungen. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Rubinstein lectured his students diligently on Wagner's orchestration of these excerpts. However, he also expected his students to ignore using such enlarged orchestral forces in their own compositions.

St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Rubinstein's conservatism also colored his relationship as a teacher and mentor of Tchaikovsky. He recognized Tchaikovsky's talent early, prodding and encouraging him. On the other hand, when Tchaikovsky submitted his concert overture The Storm to Rubinstein through Laroche (Tchaikovsky had taken ill with a fever and was out of town), Laroche received a severe dressing-down, "with all guns blazing," as Laroche wrote later.

When Tchaikovsky visited Rubinstein several days later, matters were different, but more in terms of Rubinstein's approach than in his musical preferences. Tchaikovsky biographer David Brown suggests Rubinstein might have tempered his comments in light of Tchaikovsky's hypersensitivity. Even so, as Brown writes of the piece, "A glance of the score, with such illicit things as its cor anglais and harp, would have been enough to rouse Rubinstein's fears, but the offence did not end there, for the composition was filled with musical invention which Rubinstein would never have countenanced in his own work—nor, thus, in that of one of his students."

Exactness

Still, Brown writes, Rubinstein had great positive qualities. His musical sympathies and interests were enormous. He revered Bach and was one of the first pianists to include music by the English virginalists in his recitals. He was also adamant that his pupils play from editions that faithfully represented the composers' intentions.

Schonberg adds that Rubinstein insisted on absolute fidelity to the printed note. This surprised Josef Hofmann, who had heard many Rubinstein concerts and heard his teacher take liberties himself. When he asked Rubinstein to reconcile this paradox, Rubinstein answered, as many teachers have through the ages, "When you are as old as I am, you may do as I do." Then Rubinstein added, "If you can."

Rubinstein wanted his piano students think about the music they were playing, matching the tone to the piece and the phrase. His manner with them was a combination of raw, sometimes violent criticism and good humor. Hofmann wrote of one such lesson:

Once I played a Liszt rhapsody pretty badly. After a little of it, Rubinstein said, "The way you play this piece would be all right for Auntie or Mamma." Then rising and coming toward me, he said, "Now let us see how we play such things."

I began again, but I had not played more than a few measures when Rubinstein said loudly, "Have you begun?" "Yes, Master, I certainly have." "Oh," said Rubinstein vaguely, "I didn't notice." ...

Rubinstein did not so much instruct me. Merely he let me learn from him ... If a student, by his own study and mental force, reached the desired point which the musician's wizzardry had made him see, he gained reliance in his own strength, knowing he would always find that point again even though he should lose his way once or twice, as everyone with an honest aspiration is liable to do.

Generosity

As a teacher, Rubinstein could be not only inspiring and exacting, but unstintly generous in his time and energies in helping others. After a full day of his own affairs, he would devote from six to nine in the evening to teaching. Also, after composer Vladimir Serov had backed out of a professorship at the soon-to-open Moscow Conservatory, it was Rubinstein who proposed Tchaikovsky as Serov's replacement to his brother Nikolai. Much later, when Hofmann's lessons with him were coming to an end, Rubinstein arranged for Hofmann's debut as a mature pianist. This was in Hamburg, Germany, on March 14, 1894. Hofmann played Rubinstein's Fourth Piano Concerto with the composer on the podium.

Composition

See also List of compositions by Anton Rubinstein

Cover for Anton Rubinstein's best known and most lasting composition—-his Melody in F.

Rubinstein was a prolific composer, writing no less than twenty operas (notably Demon, written after Lermontov's Romantic poem), five piano concerti, six symphonies and a large number of solo piano works along with a substantial output of works for chamber ensemble, two concertos for cello and one for violin, free-standing orchestral works and tone poems (including one entitled Don Quixote).

Rubinstein and Mikhail Glinka, considered the first important Russian classical composer, had both studied in Berlin with pedagogue Sigfried Dehn. Glinka, as Dehn's student 12 years before Rubinstein, used the opportunity to amass greater reserves of compositional skill that he could use to open up a whole new territory of Russian music. Rubinstein, conversely, chose to exercise his compositional talents within the German styles illustrated in Dehm's teaching. Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn were the strongest influences on Rubinstein's music, which he wrote with facility.

Subsequently, Rubinstein's music demonstrates none of the nationalism of The Five. He spoke out against Russian nationalism, leading to arguments with Mily Balakirev and others who felt that his establishment of a Conservatory in St. Petersburg would damage Russian musical traditions. Nonetheless, it is Rubinstein's pupil Tchaikovsky who has become perhaps most popularly identified with Russian music—the one whom Igor Stravinsky would call "The most Russian of us all."

Following Rubinstein's death, his works began to be ignored, although his piano concerti remained in the repertoire in Europe until the First World War, and his principal works have retained a toehold in the Russian concert repertoire. Falling into no dynamic tradition, and perhaps somewhat lacking in individuality, Rubinstein's music was simply unable to compete either with the established classics or with the new Russian style of Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

Over recent years, his work has been performed a little more often both in Russia and abroad, and has often met with positive criticism. Amongst his better known works are the opera The Demon, his Piano Concerto No. 4, and his Symphony No. 2, known as The Ocean.

Other Rubinsteins

Anton Rubinstein was the brother of the pianist and composer Nikolai Rubinstein, but was no relation to the 20th-century pianist Arthur Rubinstein.

Trivia

• Rubinstein was rumored to be the illigitimate son of Ludwig van Beethoven due to his striking likeness to the Austro-German master. Rubinstein neither confirmed nor denied this rumor. Neither did he remind anyone that he was born three years after Beethoven had died.

• American Amy Fay, who wrote extensively on the European music scene, admitted that while Rubinstein "has a gigantic spirit in him, and is extremely poetic and original ... for an entire evening he is too much. Give me Rubinstein for a few pieces, but Tausig for a whole evening."

• Rubinstein's brother Nikolai was also said to be a fine pianist and conductor. Rubinstein said that, had Nikolai really worked on it, he could have been the better pianist of the two.

• One of Rubinstein's students was composer and pianist Felix Blumenfeld. Blumenfeld's most famous piano student would be Vladimir Horowitz.

• French pianist Alfred Cortot played the first movement of Beethoven's Appassionata for Rubinstein when the latter was visiting Paris. After a long silence, Rubinstein told Cortot, "My boy, don't you ever forget what I am going to tell you. Beethoven's music must not be studied. It must be reincarnated." Cortot reportedly never forgot those words.

• After Rubinstein reassumed the directorship of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tsar Alexander III donated the dilapidated old Bolshoi Theater as the Conservatory's new home—without the funds needed to restore and restructure the facility. At a reception given in the monarch's honor, the Tsar asked Rubinstein if he was pleased with this gift. Rubinstein replied bluntly, "Your Imperial Majesty, if I gave you a beautiful cannon, all mounted and embossed, with no ammunition, would you like it?"

• When rehearsing the orchetra for a Moscow performance of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, Rubinstein commented to Tchaikovsky's publisher, Pyotr Jurgenson, "I think this is Tchaikovsky's best piece." After his consistent—and vocal—disapproval of his former student's compositions, Rubinstein had finally found one piece he could actually endorse.

• Rubinstein was briefly considered to receive a honorary Doctor of Music degree from Cambridge University in 1893. A desparaging passge in Rubinstein's autobiography on the British classical music scene immediately disqualified him. His place was taken by his former student, Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky.

References

In Russian

• Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein, ed. L. Barenboim, Literary Works (3 vol.), (in Russian), Moscow 1983
• Lev Aronovich Barenboim, Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein (2 vol.), (in Russian), Moscow 1957-62
• Tatyana Khoprova (ed.), Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein, (in Russian), St. Petersburg 1997 ISBN 5-8227-0029-

In German

• Litzmann, Berthold, Clara Schumann (Leipzig: Breikopf & Härtel, 1906)

In English

• Bowen, Catherine Drinker, Free Artist (New York: Random House, 1939)
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840-1875 (New York: W.W. Norton & Comoany Inc., 1978)
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Years of Wandering, 1878-1885 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1986)
• Cooke, James Francis, Great Pianists on Piano Playing (Philadelphia: Theo Presser Co., 1913)
• Gerig, Reginald R., Great Pianists and Their Techniques (Newton, Abbot, David & Charles, 1976)
• Holden, Anthony, Tchaikovsky: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1995)
• Martyn, Barrie, Rachmaninov: Composer, Pianist, Conductor {Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1990)
• Poznansky, Alexander, Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (New York, Schirmer Books, 1991)
• Riesemann, Oscar von, Rachmaninoff's Recollections (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1934)
• Sachs, Harvey, Virtuoso (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1982)
• Schonberg, Harold C., The Great Pianists (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987, 1963)

External links

• Some information on Anton Rubinstein
• Networking Rubinstein - his contacts in his early career
• Soundbites from String Quartet No.1 in G, Op.17 No.1
• Free scores by Anton Rubinstein at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)