Word: pianos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...toddler, he would eavesdrop on his sisters' piano lessons, and by the time he was three he was "a terrible little fiend" about music, screaming when his sisters struck a sour note, banging the piano lid down on their fingers. At four, he was performing at charity concerts, pressing his engraved calling cards on everyone he met: ARTUR THE GREAT PIANO VIRTUOSO. It annoyed him even then that people always asked if he was any kin to the great Anton Rubinstein, and so he took to prancing around town with the words NO RELATION inscribed on the front...
...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. The discipline took. Into his fingers he poured his long-suffocated musical genius; it began to open like a long...
...pages like a butterfly. There were self-deprecating chortles ("My profile looks like a fish") and gag-filled larks (the papers ran a picture of him playing an accordion in a combo with Greer Garson on maracas, Danny Kaye on bass and Cesar Romero on fiddle). He dubbed the piano score for a film (I've Always Loved You) and collected $85,000 for the three days' work. His RCA Victor records sold so well that he called his place "The House That Victor Built...
Tireless Rounds. There was chamber music with some of the "local talent" like Heifetz and Piatigorsky. Once, the story goes, Albert Einstein began to play a violin and piano sonata with Rubinstein. Einstein missed a cue in one passage and came in four beats late. They started again, and again Einstein flubbed. They began once more, and the great scientist again missed the cue. Finally, the exasperated Rubinstein cried, "For God's sake, Professor, can't you even count up to four...
...continued his tireless round of concertizing. To this day, Rubinstein boasts proudly that he has never canceled a performance. Touring Israel in 1952 he smashed his right hand in a bureau drawer, incapacitating his fourth finger. He played the concert anyway, sticking to his difficult program (which included a piano version of Stravinsky's Petrushka), refingering the pieces as he went along. Everywhere he went, he sold out the house, eventually commanded $6,000 a performance...