Artur RUBINSTEIN
- "He gets on my nerves"
- Witold Gombrowicz on Rubinstein's pianism.
The beloved idol of the masses, who upheld him as a great
romantic phenomenon, Rubinstein did not receive acclaim or acceptance
from discerning colleagues or listeners. How could Moriz Rosenthal,
a Liszt pupil and friend of Brahms, compete with the larger public
and record sales of the younger, oft-recorded star? Yet when Rosenthal
once spoke of Rubinstein, he meant Anton, and "not the present
clown". Artur Rubinstein made his reputation by having emphasized
the grandiose, the soft and tender, to produce an effect that
became easily understandable and clearly communicated while playing.
When the music became complex or beyond him, the thinking ceased
and the playing plodded along until something arrived which he
elevated to stir up his public. Friedman and Rosenthal despised
this side of his art and personality. His autobiographies were
labeled as "fiction" by Ella Brailowsky, who knew him
nearly 60 years. If one listens to Rubinstein's first disc, from
1910, it has the sentimental playing of a salon fop posing as
a sensitive poet. It was recorded in the same year, according
to his first volume of self-reflection, that he bested Ignaz Friedman
in a shared concert (which he remembers from the audience's noise
and alludes to not having heard a note of Friedman's playing).
In the long run Rubinstein will be viewed as a popularizer who
introduced great music and created a love for it among many who
otherwise might have remained equivocal to the classical and romantic
repertoire. [see also Leo Sirota] © Allan Evans, 1996
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