Word: rubinstein
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When it comes to exercising the fingers, Rubinstein contends that too much practice destroys the spontaneity of a performance. Besides, he says, "I want to live?live passionately. So I don't believe in all this nonsense of tying oneself to the keyboard all day." While most musicians practice for five of six hours every day, he will go for days without looking at a piano. Some younger pianists, he says, in their note-niggling pursuit of perfection, end up "taking a performance out of their pocket instead of out of their heart." This lack of involvement, he feels, extends...
Little Fiend. There are few musicians today who can claim such a firsthand connection with "the old days." Rubinstein was born in 1887, in the shabby industrial town of Lodz, Poland, where his father owned a small handloom factory. He was the last of seven children. "My mother did not want a seventh child," he explains, "so she decided to get rid of me before I was born. Then a marvelous thing happened. My aunt dissuaded her, and so I was permitted to be born. Think of it! It was a miracle...
...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 of his sailor...
...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...
King & Queen. Dejected, Rubinstein returned to Europe, and for the next four years he missed as many meals as he did notes. Nothing seemed to go right. He tried suicide, but the frazzled belt he used snapped under his weight. "The American critics were right," he admits. "In those days I dropped maybe 30% of the notes. My difficulty was that I had so much vitality and dash that I could get away with murder in Europe. But in America they felt that because they paid their money they were entitled to hear all the notes...