Word: pianists
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...used to play a kind of "Stump Artur" game in which they would call out titles?excerpts from symphonies, operas, Cole Porter scores?to see if he could play them. "Stumped Friends" would have been a better name for it. "Rubinstein," says Conductor Edouard van Remoortel, "is the only pianist you could wake up at midnight and ask to play any of the 38 major piano concertos...
Rings & Springs. Early 19th century piano teachers were altogether baffled by the newfangled instrument. All sorts of torturous devices were invented for the purpose of getting the pianist's hands to the keyboard properly. Students' arms were clamped down with iron rails, their fingers wrapped with wires, rings and springs. Beethoven, flailing the keys like a startled bird, helped do away with such practices. He also did away with quite a few pianos, which in his day were rather fragile, spindle-legged affairs with 61 keys. When he performed, an assistant stood by to take out the broken strings...
...sharp eye of Josef Joachim, who soon brought the Wunderkind to Barth. At eleven, he played Mozart's Concerto in A Major with the Berlin Symphony. In 1906, thanks to the influence of a U.S. music critic who had heard him play at Paderewski's Swiss villa, the young pianist was signed for a tour of the U.S. It was a dud. At his debut in Carnegie Hall, the critics dismissed Rubinstein for being, as one put it, "half-baked?not a prodigy, not an adult." Those were the days when he was playing with more fire than accuracy...
...made up to Nela, and after a persistent courtship married her in London in 1932. A year later they had their first child, Eva.* That started Rubinstein thinking about the future. Says he: "I didn't want people telling my child after I died, 'What a pianist your father might have been!' " In 1934, he took his family to a mountain cottage in southeastern France, rented an old upright piano and set it up in a nearby stable. Often playing by candlelight, Rubinstein labored for three months, working as much as nine hours a day, polishing his technique and repertory...
...Debussy's old home, as well as a summer place on the Costa del Sol. Still, he rarely gets a chance to stay in one place for long. He has never stopped living well, and indeed, next to his music, he loves traveling best. "If I were not a pianist," he says, "I would be a travel agent." He could also be a professional connoisseur. He owns a fine collection of paintings and 2,000 rare books ("I could cry over a book with a fine binding"). His ties come from Turnbull's in London, his handmade shirts from Barclay...