Word: rubinstein
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...Buenos Aires, Artur Rubinstein narrowly avoided an unthinkable calamity. When he learned that the piano shipped from the States wouldn't reach him by concert time, he had another favorite, a 1,400-lb. concert grand, rushed by plane from Manhattan, thus escaped playing an instrument he had never used before...
...pushed toward famed Pianist Eugene d'Albert and introduced as "little Rubinstein." "In name or talent?" asked D'Albert. "Both," piped young Artur.* Once a gadabout bachelor ("My life is too naughty; I cannot write it"), he married at 43, now has two boys and two girls, youngest five months. Says Artur: "Boys are inclined to smile tolerantly and say 'Papa is a fine fellow-but a little mad.' But daughters-they understand-and adore! They know instinctively that an artist remains something of a child to the end of his days...
Pain & Revolt. No classical artist demands and so often gets Rubinstein's high minimum guarantee ($3,500 a concert), but he is a good investment. At one concert in Lincoln, Neb. last year, Rubinstein earned $5,400 as his share of the box-office receipts. His Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2 was Victor's 1946 best-selling classical album. The $85,000 he collected for three days' piano playing for the movie I've Always Loved You is still a Hollywood record...
...pianists who rank with Rubinstein in the estimation of critics don't get around much any more (the great Josef Hofmann is 71, and in semiretirement; Artur Schnabel, 65, unexcelled at Beethoven, plays only a few concerts a year). And Vladimir Horowitz and Jose Iturbi, who ring the cash register as loudly as Rubinstein in individual concerts, don't make the long tours he does...
...forthcoming movie, Brahms, Robert & Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt are shown at the piano. In each case it is Rubinstein being dubbed on the sound track, playing as he thinks each would have played. His own pianistic style is clearly definable. Rubinstein is at his best in Chopin, and vice versa. Chopin's elusive poetic shadings and magical fire are easy to overdo. As a Pole, Rubinstein seems to understand the zal in Chopin's works, which Music Critic James Huneker defined as "a baleful compound of pain, sadness, secret rancor and revolt...