Word: rubinstein
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...powers of the mind, the one overriding trait that makes Rubinstein percolate is rooted in his spirit. He is a hopelessly rosy-eyed, warm-blooded, bighearted, card-carrying romantic. On the Old World side, his pianistic pedigree dates back to some of the great masters and to the very origins of the instrument. Violinist Josef Joachim, Brahms's great friend, was Rubinstein's mentor. Rubinstein got his piano training from Karl Heinrich Earth, who was taught by the man (Franz Liszt), who was taught by the man (Karl Czerny), who was taught by the man?Ludwig van Beethoven...
Their approach was cautious, logical, austere. Their devotion to classic purity, to the sanctity of the composer's intent, spawned a new school of junior-executive pianists, most of them Americans, noted for their technical brilliance and carbon-copy sameness. Rubinstein, with more regret than scorn, calls them "bank clerks." They practice, practice, practice?and when they go onstage, so remote is their detachment from their audience that they practice some more...
Like a Bee. Somewhere between the last gush of the romantics and the first blush of the moderns, emerged Artur Rubinstein. Like a browser at a rummage sale, he sampled the new and the old and took the best from each. From the new he learned respect for the notes; from the old, devotion to what goes on between the notes. "I approached all those pianists like a bee," he says. "I owe them quite a lot, but I dismissed a lot in them too. If there's anything original about me, it is a composite of all of them...
Pedal & Heart. This ability to project the grand design of the music, to crystallize the ebb and flow of its inner voices, is at the foundation of Rubinstein's artistry. His music, especially compared with the neurotic fancy-flights of other pianists, is also remarkable for its sanity, directness and healthy emotionalism. Beyond that, he possesses an elegance of tone that is the envy of the profession. With a combination of pedal, touch and heart, he sings his way into the poetic soul of the music. He can take a diminuendo passage and without spoiling the line, make it grow...
...Rubinstein has no idea how he produces his tone. It comes partly from a physique that looks as though it had walked out of a fun-house mirror. His dimensions (5 ft. 8 in., 167 Ibs.) are deceiving. His trunk is too short for his legs; yet he has the arms and hands of a man twice his size. His biceps are as big as a shotputter's, and his fist looks like the business end of a sledge hammer. His fingers, whose tips are cushioned from years of "cleaning the piano's teeth," are spatula-shaped; the all-important...