Loading home…
"On stage, I will take a chance. There has to be an element of daring in great music-making. These younger ones, they are too cautious. They take the music out of their pockets instead of their hearts." Arthur Rubinstein was a Polish-American pianist who is widely considered as one of the greatest piano virtuoso of the 20th century. He received international acclaim for his performances of Frédéric Chopin and Johannes Brahms and his championing of Spanish music.Hi wass the youngest child the large Jewish community. Beginning at the piano when he was still two years of age, Rubinstein first studied in Warsaw. At the age of four he played for the great German violinist Joseph Joachim who was greatly impressed and began to play the role of mentor for the young prodigy. By age ten Rubinstein moved to Berlin to continue his studies. In 1900, at the age of thirteen, he made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic, followed by appearances in Germany and Poland and further study with Karl Heinrich Barth. In 1904, he moved to Paris to launch his career in earnest. There he met the composers Maurice Ravel, Paul Dukas, and the violinist Jacques Thibaud. He also played Camille Saint-Saëns' Piano Concerto No. 2 in the presence of the composer. Through the family of Juliusz Wertheim (to whose understanding of Chopin's genius he attributed his own inspiration in the works of that composer) he formed a friendship with the violinist Pawel Kochański, which led later to artistic and social involvement with Karol Szymanowski. Rubinstein was fluent in eight languages.His photographic memory of much of the repertoire, not simply that of the piano, was formidable.According to his memoirs, the pianist learned César Franck's Symphonic Variations while on a train en route to the concert, without the benefit of a piano.After brief studies with Paderewski in Switzerland in 1903, Rubinstein moved to Paris, where he met Ravel, Dukas, and Jacques Thibaud, and played Saint-Saëns' G minor Concerto to the composer's approval. That work would remain a flashy Rubinstein vehicle for six decades, and it was the concerto he offered in his American debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in New York's Carnegie Hall in 1906. His under-prepared American tour was not especially well-received, though, so he withdrew to Europe for further study. Rubinstein became an adept and sensitive chamber musician and accompanist; his 1912 London debut was accompanying Pablo Casals, and during World War I he toured with Eugène Ysaÿe.